Romania’s harvest stood at 476,000 tons this fall, which means 100 million watermelons available, weighing 4.5 kilos on average. Watermelons made a EUR320 million market this fall, according to ZF estimates, based on a 0.3 lei (EUR0.07) price per kilo.
The watermelon production is now one third lower than ten years ago but in a good year a hectare of watermelons generates EUR3,000 revenue, three times much as much as wheat.
The Dolj County town of Dabuleni in southern Romania close to the Danube harbor city of Bechet has become a famous watermelon brand.
Everyone in Dabuleni and nearby villages works in the watermelon business, which has increased so much that several thousand small farmers grow watermelons on 5,000 to 6,000 hectares. The region grows watermelons on a quarter of the land allocated to this crop in the entire country.
Nicolae Bileru, a 43-year old farmer in Dabuleni has become one of the leading producers of watermelons in Romania, with a 15-hectare farm. He has been growing watermelons for more than two decades and in the last four years has also exported some of his harvest.
He says the difference between profit and loss in the watermelon business comes from weather and prices. The market almost never sees two good years in a row.
“A good year for watermelon production comes about once every four years. This year is about the same as last year in terms of production, but prices were very low and the high temperatures in the summer caused spots to develop on the rind and you can’t sell spotted melons.”
Investments in a hectare of watermelons range from EUR1,600 to EUR4,500. In a good year the yield is 50 tons per hectare, Bileru says.
At an average yield of 50 tons/hectare and an average price per ton of RON200, the revenue per hectare stands at EUR2,300.
Watermelon exports amounted to EUR350,000 last year and to EUR200,000 in the first half of 2013, double as much as in the year-ago period, according to the official statistics of the Agriculture Ministry.
Imports of melons, on the other hand, stood at EUR4.5 million, 22 times higher than exports in the first half. One of the main sources of imports is Turkey, the largest regional producer, with a ten times bigger harvest than Romania’s.
“Watermelons have to be sold shortly after harvest or they will spoil and if you have cold storage facilities you still cannot keep them for more than a few months. I would need EUR1 million for such an investment and if I had this money I wouldn’t have gone into farming,” Nicolae Bileru said.
Most of the farmers in Dabuleni are not thrilled at the prospect of partnering, he added, so one can see them by the side of the road trying to sell the production every autumn.
However, 80 farmers in Dabuleni did team up and pool their production every year to sell it to retailers via Casa Pepenilor Verzi (House of Watermelons).
“We have a storage facility where each of us stores their production and we have contracts with Real and Metro,” says Florea Diaconu, chairman of the group of farmers behind Casa Pepenilor Verzi SRL, which posted a mere EUR30,000 revenue last year.
Diaconu says that a significant part of the profit and revenue on the watermelon market goes to intermediaries. While the watermelons left the farms at RON0.2 to RON0.5 per kilo they reached store shelves at a five times that at the start of the season.
“The year was bad because of the very low prices,” Bileru concluded.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)