Fruit growers lost thousands of tons of apples. We haven’t experienced that, they say

Fruit growers in the Czech Republic are recovering from Monday night. The frost deprived many of them of all their crops. The biggest ones calculate damages in the tens to hundreds of millions and consider how to deal with it.

Sady Tuchoraz, a company from the vicinity of Český Brod, which is the largest apple grower in the country, suffered a big blow. It delivers 15,000 tons to retail chains annually, but this year it will not harvest anything at all.

“The crop is 100 percent frozen, all the apples are burnt. This has never happened to us in 31 years of business. It’s a huge existential problem,” says Robert Vyšata, co-owner of the orchards. Apples are black inside, even a layman can recognize the damage at first glance.

Mráz also surprised the other gardeners with whom the editorial staff of SZ biznys spoke. “I have been working in the field for over thirty years, but I have never encountered a similar situation,” responded Pavel Kašpárek, an agronomist at the SAD company. “In the past, we have deliberately spread out the sets in different areas and altitudes to reduce the risks. They are even thirty kilometers apart. Until this year, it paid off for us and we never lost an entire crop,” he added.

The company from Mělnicko reports one hundred percent damage to the crop, which mainly includes cherries, sour cherries and pears. According to him, the damage to 400 hectares of orchards amounts to tens of millions of crowns, and the prices of fruit on the counter will probably reach hundreds of millions. The problem is that the company has no other production to repair the damage.

Frosts in April have come in other years as well, but this year it was different. It was very cold all night from Monday to Tuesday. Temperatures in the orchards reached -6 degrees Celsius. They usually don’t last as long and aren’t as strong. The second problem was that the frost hit the trees at a more advanced stage of growth than usual. The fruits of the trees are in the phase in which we usually see them in the second half of May. Growers claim that fruits are more susceptible to frost than flowers. Vegetation was accelerated by the historically highest temperatures in April. At the beginning of the month, tropical temperatures reached thirty degrees.

The co-owner of Sadů Tuchoraz assumes that the loss from apple production will reach annual sales, which correspond to approximately 300 million crowns. “We will lose that somehow. We will have to save, but it is not possible to establish a crop. We will save something on operating costs, in the area of ​​warehouses and costs associated with sales,” he added.

The company has 150 regular employees and another two hundred seasonal workers, for example for harvesting work, which it will understandably not hire this year. He does not intend to lay off permanent workers. “Retaining employees will be essential, they are the company’s greatest asset,” said Vyšata.

Extreme heat came, followed by arctic cold. The apricots were already three centimeters long, but the frost was so invasive that the entire fruit froze.

The smaller family farm Ovocné sady Bříství also suffered considerable damage. On twenty hectares of orchards in the Kolín region, 90 percent of the apples, which are the main fruit for the company, froze. Already last year, the company lost seventy percent of apples. Strawberries, sold in the form of self-picking, will be about half as much. Pears and plums are 100 percent destroyed.

“Frosts have been bothering us for the third year in a row and represent an existential problem for us,” described co-owner Alice Žertová. According to her, this year’s frosts are unprecedented. “If the course of winter is normal, the fruits expect frosts. But this year came extreme heat followed by arctic cold. The apricots were already three centimeters long, but the frost was so invasive that the whole fruit froze,” he explains.

“We will all meet, management and employees, and we will decide what to do next. We don’t want to close it, we are fighters. And firing qualified people is the end of business,” said the farmer. The company does not have any other agricultural production, but tries to process the fruit into various products, for example fried crisps. In the worst case, he will have to buy them.

The Ministry of Agriculture of Marek Výborný (KDU-ČSL) is preparing a compensation program for fruit growers. He assumes that it will reach 70 to 100 million crowns, i.e. a fraction of the more than a billion in estimated damage to growers. The frost left another billion in damage to the vineyards.

According to the chairman of the Fruit Union of the Czech Republic, Martin Ludvík, the frost also affected the surrounding countries, but it is not yet clear what the damage will be.

“The frost also passed through Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Switzerland, the north of France, the Netherlands and Belgium,” he said. The Czech Republic imports a considerable volume of apples from Poland. Damage to fruit in the country mainly concerns apples, which make up 80 percent of growers’ production.