Bulgarian agricultural producers continue to struggle with catastrophically low purchase prices from retail chains and exchanges. Maria, a vegetable producer from Pazardzhik, tearfully told how this spring she was forced to throw away 25 tons of cauliflower and give it to the animals because she could not sell it at a reasonable price.
"It is a complete mockery of the producers. This spring we threw away 25 tons of cauliflower of our production, we gave it to the animals", the producer told BGNES.
Together with her husband, Maria grows and sells leeks, pumpkins, cabbage, beets and potatoes - all from her own production in the region. Despite the high quality of the produce, the purchase prices from retail chains are so low that she is already urging her husband to give up farming.
"Look at the cabbage, look at the quality. The chains give us 19-20 stotinki maximum per kilogram and pay whenever they want. Isn't this a mockery?", asked Maria through tears. According to her, however, the reality is even worse than that: "This is scarier, this is the destruction of production".
The producer explains that the situation on the commodity exchanges is no different. There, too, she receives mercilessly low prices, and additionally suffers humiliating treatment.
"And at the market, they throw us at each other and we walk around in despair and get 30 stotinki at most", shared Maria, who sells her produce in Sofia.
In addition to the low purchase prices, producers also bear heavy transportation costs. Maria calculates how much it costs to sell vegetables in the capital when you are from the Pazardzhik region.
"Do the math. Going and returning to Pazardzhik are two times over 120 kilometers. That's transport, fuel, trucks. I'm not even talking about the nerves and stress involved. We are simply destroying our production", she also stated.
With a distance of over 240 kilometers for a trip to Sofia and back, with a diesel price of about 3 leva per liter and a truck consumption of about 15-20 liters per 100 kilometers, the fuel alone for one trip costs between 110 and 150 leva. Added to this are the depreciation of the vehicle, road tolls and lost time.
The case with Maria is not isolated. In June of this year, another producer from Pazardzhik - Ivan Kaburov from the village of Malo Konare - also decided to prematurely destroy his greenhouse cucumbers because the price of the Bulgarian cucumber collapsed below 90 stotinki on the stock exchange.
The problem with low purchase prices from chains and stock exchanges is systemic and affects thousands of Bulgarian agricultural producers. Although Bulgarian production is of high quality, producers are often unable to sell it at a fair price, leading to mass crop destruction and leaving the sector.