Commodities: Fruitful problems of plenty

SUMMER is usually a time of plenty for a variety of mouthwatering fresh fruits. But this year an over-abundance of some fruits is wreaking havoc on several farm economies, and leading to angry protests.

The European peach market is in crisis. Spain's peach prices have fallen so low - below 18p per kilo - that a special European Community rescue operation was triggered by low prices two weeks ago.

Under the emergency measures, all the producers give their peaches to the state for a token payment until prices climb above the trigger level, instead of marketing the fruit. But prices still languish and the emergency measures remain in effect.

France, Europe's fourth largest peach producer, has troubles too. Farmers are so angry at low prices that they have dumped truckloads of peaches three times in two weeks and have destroyed imported produce.

The third biggest European peach producer after Italy and Greece, Spain has had larger-than-normal peach crops in the past two years and suffered from a similar crisis last summer too.

The peaches Spain is now taking off the market are not destined for sale. The EC tries to avoid destroying produce withdrawn from the market and do something useful with it, such as give it to charity, use it as animal feed, or put it in industrial non-food products.

Yet even giving the food away is problematical. It is impossible to predict when and how much will be available. Since peaches are perishable, and inedible within a fortnight, useful redistribution is even trickier.

British consumers are not benefiting from the low prices, as many British supermarkets do not carry Spanish peaches. Indeed Italian inflation and hailstorms a few weeks ago have pushed the price of their peaches about 10-15p per lb above last year. Sainsbury's has been selling a punnet of eight Italian or French peaches for 99p, and a single peach for 16p.

The apple market is also in contortions. The European apple season is just beginning, and English growers are anxious after an unprofitable 1992.

They were hit with a double whammy last year: a bumper European harvest, the biggest in 10 years at nearly 11 million tonnes; and an overhang of imported southern hemisphere apples.

The massive European apple crop depressed apple prices around the world. Exports from the southern hemisphere to the EC have jumped by 40 per cent to 730,000 tonnes this year as financially pressed growers try to cut their losses. As a consequence, 1.7 million tonnes of apples went into EC storage.

Controversially, EC growers have lobbied for apple import restrictions to protect their market. No quotas have been imposed, but new import licences keeping tabs on quantities entering the EC may keep a lid on imports, the National Farmers Union said.

Growers in New Zealand, now at the end of their harvest, are particularly distressed. Some of New Zealand's 1,700 apple producers undoubtedly will go under because of the low prices prevailing since last autumn, says Alasdair Robertson, general manager of the New Zealand Apple and Pear Marketing Board's London office.

New Zealand resents taking flak about southern hemisphere apple exports to Europe, when Chile, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa are also exporting heavily. New Zealand's apple exports to Europe are 155,000 tonnes, minor compared with Europe's stockpiles of nearly 2 million tonnes.

For both peaches and apples, it is the familiar story of industrialised countries grappling with the problems of plenty, while people elsewhere starve. But it is useful to remember how surpluses were handled in the past, before common agricultural policies and producer marketing boards existed.

Growers did not bring the produce to market anyway, or get a subsidy for it. They simply left it to ripen on the trees or vines, where it eventually fell to the ground, and rotted.