Sil Moonen of Berryfarm.nl (Netherlands): "Night frosts have cut our blueberry harvest in half this year"

For Sil Moonen of the Dutch company Berryfarm.nl, the current blueberry season is proving to be a testing year. “We always say that the market for Dutch blueberries only starts to pick up when the schools open their doors and everyone has returned from their holidays. Now that many people are staying at home or vacationing in their own country, the situation can be quite different. For example, the UK is an important market for our blueberries. Normally around 30% of the 65 million Britons go on holiday abroad. If visits to UK supermarkets now increase in the summer, this could boost our sales."

The producer could use such a stroke of luck. “Night frosts have cut the crop in half this year. Fortunately, we have expanded our plantations between the north and south of the Netherlands and the north of Germany (a total of 60 hectares). The frosts have mainly affected our plots in the Dutch town of Drenthe. There the temperature dropped to almost 10 degrees below zero during the night of May 10-11. I've never experienced damage like this before, and I'm not the only one this has happened to. In any case, the damage occurred at a very local level. For example, in the town of Roggel there is hail damage in one of my plots, while in another 200 meters away absolutely nothing has happened”.

“At the moment, the prices are somewhat disappointing. From Eastern European countries, the market is flooded with blueberries, mostly free varieties, which has put prices under pressure. But when these batches have disappeared, there may even be some shortages”, foresees the producer. “But that remains to be seen, because I have heard that the first blueberries imported from the southern hemisphere have already arrived in Europe. But nothing is certain right now, because if there is a second wave of coronavirus in South America, the world will be very different again."

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