According to the analytical report “FreshApples, Grapes, and Pears: World Markets and Trade” from the USDA, fresh apple production in the 2013/14 season will increase by 175 thousand tons to reach 83.1 million tons. Many analysts mistakenly considered this to be a forecast for production growth, but an increase of 175 thousand tons is equivalent to a 0.002% change in production and is significantly below the standard error of such forecasts. Therefore, this report actually confirms the stagnation of global apple production in the new season.
Moreover, small apple production forecast is quite unusual, because previously world apple production grew steadily over years, despite the fact that global trade stagnated. According to EastFruit analysts, global trade in fresh apples in 2018-2022 decreased by an average of 1.1% per year, even in value terms, and this in conditions of high dollar inflation in recent years! By comparison, overall trade in fruits increased by 4.3% per year. It is therefore not surprising that the share of apples in world trade continued to fall rapidly. In physical terms, world apple trade decreased, according to our estimates, by approximately 20-30 thousand tons per year, against the backdrop of continued growth in the world’s population.
Read also: Apple exports from the EU, Ukraine, Moldova, and Turkey stopped due to Houthi terror in the Red Sea
By the way, the volume of trade in fresh and frozen berries is already almost twice the volume of trade in apples. Moreover, berries have recently overtaken bananas in global trade and remain the most trending and fastest-growing item, along with cherries and durians.
Returning to the USDA report, American analysts estimate that fresh apple production in China will increase slightly, within the framework of our previous estimates, i.e. in fact, it will remain historically low. Estimates for the EU also do not contain major news – there, as earlier reported, production will decrease quite significantly. Similarly for the USA – the production increase of 56 thousand tons is almost within the statistical error.
The biggest surprise from the report is the estimate of unchanged apple production in India, although earlier everyone was expecting a significant decline in production. This may partly explain the rather sluggish demand in India for apples from Turkey. Other changes in production estimates are not significant for our region.
However, the forecast of USDA for a sharp increase in the global apple trade is somewhat surprising. Given the actual stagnation of apple production and consumption, as well as the growing number of trade barriers and restrictions, in our opinion, there is no particular reason to expect an increase in global trade in fresh apples in 2023/24.
The use of the site materials is free if there is a direct and open for search engines hyperlink to a specific publication of the East-Fruit.com website.
