White cabbage started October at a record high price.

At the beginning of the 2024 season, Polish young white cabbage started weak in terms of prices in the domestic wholesale market. In June, they dropped to a level as low as in the disastrous campaign of 2020. However, this unfavorable trend for producers was then halted, and in July of this year, it was reversed.

The summer turned out to be significantly more favorable for white cabbage prices. Unfortunately, this was not due to any surge in demand, but only due to unfavorable weather conditions that had a detrimental impact on cabbage production. Prices slowly rose, but considering the limited supply we have been dealing with for weeks, this increase was still too weak.

Only recently has this upward trend managed to push white cabbage prices above the levels from all five previous seasons, as seen on the chart above. As a result, this cabbage starts October with a record high price - not only for this time of year, but for at least the past 16 years.

Currently, the selling prices of bagged cabbage in large wholesale markets are mostly 1.30-1.60 PLN/kg for goods intended for the fresh market. This is a staggering 77 percent above the average of the previous 5 years, though only about 4 percent off the highest quote for October 1st of this period (1.40 PLN/kg in 2022).

Such high prices at the beginning of autumn, during the harvest, suggest that the 2024/2025 season will be expensive in the white cabbage market. Forecasts of very low yields support this thesis, as well as the analysis of our chart above. In the aforementioned 2022/2023 season, the average price of cabbage in large wholesale markets remained relatively high, and at the end of the season, it rose very sharply, in conditions of a huge supply gap.