The prices of green beans
The wholesale green bean market has experienced a real roller coaster of prices in recent days. During the week between August 16 and 23 this year, the average selling price of this vegetable in large wholesale quantities plummeted by as much as 55 percent, which is over half of the initial value. It should be emphasized that this occurred in the second half of August, a period when the green bean market in Poland usually enters its final phase characterized by a decrease in supply and a tendency towards a certain price increase.
Of course, this is not a hundred percent rule. We can see on our chart that there are exceptions, such as the drastically different scenario from the 2019 season. But usually, in the second half of August, the period of peak supply and the associated lowest prices are already in the past. However, this current season we had a deviation from the usual pattern.
Prices sharply dropped, almost to the point of collapse. This is the result of a delayed "flood" of green beans - a consequence of specific weather conditions. It may have seemed that this decline would last a while longer because at the end of last week, a significant amount of produce entered the market, including beans offered at very low prices (4.00 PLN/kg [0.94 EUR/kg]) of average or poor quality. What's worse, the retail trade was not prepared for this and did not see a similar scale of price reduction in stores as in the wholesale market. This did not help strengthen demand.
The beginning of this week brought another turn in the price trend of green beans. The downward trend was halted, and prices even rebounded slightly. In the case of selling prices in large wholesale quantities, they increased by 10 percent and are currently mostly in the range of 4.00-7.00 PLN/kg (0.94-1.64 EUR/kg), and it seems that it will soon be more like 5.00-8.00 PLN/kg (1.17-1.87 EUR/kg), depending on the region of the country and the quality of the produce. Looking at our chart, this change in direction saved the current average price from falling below the average of the previous five years. But it was close.