Poor Watermelon Harvest Sends Prices Soaring
07 August, 2021
Prices of watermelons, the popular cooling summer fruit, are skyrocketing due to a poor harvest and soaring labor costs.
On Wednesday, one farmer in his 50s tapped on a watermelon in his field in Jinan, North Jeolla Province and shook his head when he heard a sloshing sound. It was too soft to sell because it overripened in the protracted heat wave.
Jinan is ideal for growing watermelons because it is on a plateau 450 m above sea level where they get plenty of sun but the nights are normally cool. Nonetheless, the heat is playing havoc with the crop this year.
As a result the farmer's price for a 9-kg watermelon jumped to W25,000, 2.5 times more than last year's (US$1=W1,145). That translates into a consumer price of over W30,000. An online shopping mall is selling 9-kg premium watermelons with high sugar content for W45,000.
Most watermelons in the market are from the highlands of Jinan, Yanggu in Gangwon Province, and Bonghwa in North Gyeongsang Province. Farmers drastically reduced the size of their fields after flood damage in August last year and began growing other produce like red peppers. In Jinan, the size of watermelon fields shrank by about 630,000 sq.m.
Labor costs also jumped as fewer foreign farmhands arrived and farmers had to hire domestic workers amid the pandemic lockdown. Each worker costs W120,000 for 10 hours, up W40,000 from a year earlier.
Since watermelon farming is labor-intensive, many farmers have decided to leave their fields fallow.
Choi Jong-jin of the Jinan agricultural cooperative predicted, "Watermelon prices won't drop until Aug. 10, the last of this year's dog days, when demand will peak."
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