In Russia, sugar has risen in price, but potatoes have begun to become cheaper

In the old days, when we knew nothing about inflation and did not follow the exchange rate of the ruble, preparations for the winter began in late August or early September. When the prices for vegetables and fruits are at the very minimum and nothing, so to speak, portends danger. Now housewives have already opened the season for preparing stocks – various pickles and jams.

– Wow, how the price of sugar has risen, – the woman twirls a kilogram package of this product in her hands. – 69 rubles. At the end of last week I bought here for 65 …

“Now everyone is sweeping sugar, so it is getting more expensive,” says another customer who put 10 packages of “white sugar” at 69 rubles each in a cart.

The first interlocutor says that her family needs 50 kilograms of sugar to make jam (she has already made it from raspberries, now blackcurrant is on the way) and canned cucumbers with tomatoes. Here, since the end of June, slowly, 3-5 kilos, brings home, “until the price has risen.”

– It takes as much for jam as it takes for berries, – she explains, – one to one. For smaller cucumbers and tomatoes, 3-5 tablespoons per three-liter jar. But in general, you need a lot of sugar …

Berries are in vogue today. At vegetable stalls, gooseberries – 300 rubles a kilogram (a small glass – 70), raspberries – 300-450 rubles, blueberries – 600-800, white currants – 360 rubles a kilogram …

Everything is actively bought up, because the vitamin season is short.

The “seasons” for Russian housewives changed at the end of 2020, when sugar prices soared 72% since the fall and it took the president’s personal intervention to impose price caps on the sweet product. That’s when they said to themselves: preparations need to be made in advance, how to prepare a sleigh in the summer. Pickled and pickled cucumbers with tomatoes, if they are hermetically sealed in jars, will stand for at least three years. So why wait for autumn when there is a rush, if you can collect the ingredients ahead of time?

As a matter of fact, they were right. Already in 2022 (two years after the historical intervention of the president), at the “marginal prices” for this product, according to Rosstat, sugar was recognized as the most expensive, adding 39.4% in price.

The trend has continued this year as well. In April, it was still possible to buy it for 57 rubles, but in May and June, respectively, for 60 and 66 rubles per kilogram. So why hope for a miracle? 69 rubles is also not the limit …

The problem, however, is that it is not just one or two housewives who think this way. All of them enter the shopping trail in advance and, thereby, cause increased demand and rising prices – which is what we saw in the supermarket.

Nevertheless, the main culprits of the seasonal increase in prices for canned vegetables can be considered not retail chains, but our … grandmothers who sell greens for pickling. Without knowing it, they accelerate inflation. A 100-gram bunch of herbs (dill, parsley, horseradish leaf and celery sprig) costs 100 rubles today, twice as much as a year ago. And such a “dose” is enough for two three-liter jars of cucumbers. In general, our old grandmothers only manage to knit bundles of greenery with threads …

But not everything is so bad in the consumer market. If it’s better to think about jams and pickles here and now, then it seems that we don’t have to worry about the borscht set. Firstly, imported vegetables from Azerbaijan, Egypt and other countries have already squeezed our products from the southern regions of Russia. And secondly, she brought down the price. Young white and washed potatoes in supermarkets cost 40 rubles a kilogram. And this is not the limit. According to experts’ forecasts, prices for potatoes, beets, and carrots will not grow at all.

“We have a lot of stocks of tubers from last year,” the Rostov farmer told us. – Don’t throw it away! They planted everything – both seed and commodity. There will be a lot of “second bread”. Now our potatoes are in stores for 40 rubles. But central Russia is already starting to dig, in the fall we will probably sell 6 rubles from the field. The situation is the same for other vegetables.

Prices for onions finally dropped to 55-57 rubles per kilogram – products from the Krasnodar Territory went. Until recently, in retail, its cost reached hundreds of rubles.

But what to expect closer to winter? Experts believe that domestic peasants are unlikely to survive the next price drop in vegetables for the borscht set (for the second year in a row), they will go bankrupt. After all, their production costs have increased by 30%, and purchase prices will again be “zero”…