canary banana prices lowest level august

Canary banana prices hit year low in August

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

August ended with very bad news for Canary Islands banana growers, which, despite being expected, is no less damaging for it. In week 35, covering 24–30 August, the farm-gate price of Canary bananas hit its lowest level of the year and of the past 12 months, at €0.325 per kilo. This is down from €0.35 the previous week and even lower than week 33’s value of €0.33 per kilo.

Prices fall to one-year low

Island growers will receive just €0.32 per kilo for fruit sold during that week, with payments due in over a month’s time. This is the average price for premium quality produce, according to data published on Thursday by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA). If talk of ruin in the sector had already begun over harvests and shipments since early July this year, a new term now needs to be found to describe the current situation.

The money landing in growers’ bank accounts from local marketing companies, at that average price of €0.32 per kilo, is not only the worst average threshold of the year for premium quality fruit (and it should be noted that farms do not solely produce that grade, obviously) but is also the lowest average value over the past year, calculated back from week 35. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that this final income for Canary banana growers barely covers one third of on-farm production costs, estimated at between €0.80 and €0.90 per kilo, pending a necessary update to that range.

Income insufficient even with subsidies

That low income level, the farm-gate price, means no business profitability for fruit from that week, even when the direct POSEI subsidy payment of €0.32 per kilo is taken into account. Farmers are furious, though they keep it to themselves. As for solutions, none are forthcoming from Asprocan, as is usual when summer crises hit; one can only say they are limited to waiting for September to arrive and for farm-gate prices to recover as demand for Canary bananas picks up again. Sometimes this happens, sometimes it does not, as can be seen in the chart published here. It occurred in 2025, not in 2024. Even less so in the dramatic year of 2023, when the crisis lasted nearly the whole year.

The ongoing crisis in the prices paid to farmers during the summer months continues to go unaddressed: the ship is being left to drift, one might say, with the market expected to sort everything out. The liberalism proclaimed into the microphones by Asprocan’s president, José Carlos Rendón, is being applied. And it seems, according to sources in the production sector linked to Asprocan’s marketing committee, that the solution will once again arrive on its own, as an improvement in wholesale and green fruit quotations on the mainland is already forecast, particularly from the second week of September, week 37, when the shipping target will stand at 6.8 million kilos – certainly a high volume.

Retailers apply discounts to shift surplus

In week 36, the current week, the planned shipment was smaller, at around 6.5 million kilos. Additionally, 330,000 kilos were held back on farms, which now, at least in part, will be added to week 37’s shipping volume. According to the same sources, major retail chains are currently applying significant discounts to shift surplus or older fruit. This should help clear ripening rooms as supply is renewed, allowing a new sales cycle to resume with, in all likelihood, greater outgoing supply driven by the always stronger demand of early and mid-September – in other words, with the almost total return to normality after the mass summer holidays.

The private managers of Canary banana production, those within Asprocan’s orbit, are already talking of emerging from the pit, again without doing anything or very little, according to the growers most affected by the low prices received. Meanwhile, the ruinous summer results continue to be borne solely by the producer, who also knows this is not always the only such period in the calendar year. All of this is happening, it is well known, with maximum endurance shown by those local growers holding the most fruit during those months, and without any rebellion or collective response in the form of public protest from those most ruined.

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