The regional stock exchange in Emmeloord has not seen enough reason to list conventional carrots since mid-October. There are simply too few transactions known in the market on which to base a listing.
The carrot harvest is largely complete. Here and there, some carrots are still scattered in the fields because there's no market for them yet, or because the crates and cold storage rooms are already full. "The best carrots are already harvested. What's still there is of inferior quality," says one trader.
Of the carrots currently in the field, a number of plots will eventually be lost. This could be due to increasing ring rot or declining foliage quality. Ultimately, these plots will be considered lost, and the cultivation will end with plowing.
The good harvest and competition with potatoes and onions have led to a real search for cubic crates in recent weeks. That search is now coming to an end as the last remaining space in the cold stores is being filled. Slow sales, combined with a very good harvest and the fact that carrots are somewhat of a last-ditch harvest, have made it difficult to find a place for the large quantity of carrots.
Smaller yields
A bright spot is that yields in Belgium and Germany are slightly lower than a year ago. There, the harvest fits perfectly into storage. This contrasts with last year, when carrots were still being harvested in February, March, and even April. While this doesn't bring any relief to the market in the short term, it does raise hopes for a better market later in the season.
It is also expected that in the Netherlands not as much will be stored in cold stores as in previous years. BMoreover, it looks like the number of kilos of carrots per crate is not too bad, in the sense that there are fewer kilos in a crate than initially thought.
For now, little business is being done. Free trade is limited to a few cars here and there. Prices paid for them are low. This week, some were done for 8 cents per kilo. The trading volume is too small for the Emmeloord stock exchange to determine a price. The last price in mid-October was 13 to 14 cents per kilo. Even then, the atmosphere was already weak.
Organic carrot
In that respect, organic carrots are doing much better. In a calm market, the price for these carrots rose this week by €1,50 to between €27 and €30 per 100 kilos. Some organic carrots are now going to Germany, which wasn't the case until February last season. Moreover, some free trade is already underway, while sales last February were entirely contract work.