The average price of fruit and vegetables has shot up 11% between 2021 and 2022, warned this Friday the Rural Families consumer association, which publishes an observatory of the prices of everyday consumer goods every year.
“The conventional basket”, compared to products from organic farming, “increased by 11%, that is, twice as much as inflation, which is already very high”, reveals Familles Rurales in a press release.
The price of the fruit basket increased by 8% and that of vegetables by 15% for conventional agricultural products. In organic, which is more expensive, the increases are less pronounced, with +4% for fruit and even a 3% drop in the price of vegetables.
The champion of conventional inflation is the watermelon (+40% in one year) mainly due to “unfavorable weather conditions” for production, especially in Spain.
Watermelon leads the rises
The peach (+25%), the pepper (+37%), the tomato on the vine (+31%) or the green bean (+21%) are also among the most inflationary products. On the contrary, onions (-14%), apples (-7%) or carrots (-3%) are on average cheaper than the previous year.
In organic farming, peaches (+28%), lemons (+13%), watermelons (+11%) and peppers (+10%) are the products that have risen the most in price, while many vegetables have seen stagnant or fall.
“The year 2022 will not mark the beginning of a fall in the price of fruit, whether conventional or organic,” says Rural Families, for whom “the cause is fundamentally due to the inflationary shock that producers have also suffered, which has caused a sharp increase in production and packaging costs”.
Organic prices are rising more slowly
The more limited increase in the prices of organic products is explained, according to the association, by the lower use of inputs and, above all, by a greater difficulty in selling the production, since consumers “seem to have moved away from the most expensive foods.”
This inflation did not wait until 2022, according to price reports from Rural Families: “from May 2012 to May 2022, the prices of fresh fruit increased by +42% and those of fresh vegetables by 37%”. At the same time, food prices and the general consumer price index “increased 15% and 13% respectively.”
Given this increase, the association asks politicians to dedicate a food check “for all those who today are excluded from healthy products for their health, due to lack of sufficient budget.”
Source: BFM TV
