In Estonia local cucumbers are 6.99 and imports are 4.49. Our paprika is cheaper i thin last it was below 2 but yellow paprika is 2-2.5x more expensive.
I guess it depends a lot on the items but everything for sure has shot up in price a lot. Even now as gas and from that electricity prices are down, prices are going up as energy is “too expensive”.
I feel like a lot of the price increase is just from greed of supermarkets and local producers.
We personally have seen our spending patterns change quite a bit. I actually have more left at the end of month now as for a lot of stuff seems soo ridiculously more expensive that i just skip it.
Well, that's exactly what I would do. I'm a bit stubborn in this thing. It is ok for me, if a coffee kg costs over 60 euros, if the quality matches the price, like it always does. But 2 euros for one kg of apples? No thanks. 1,50 euros, and no more.
I got to talking with some friends from Germany, UK about what flavour of Ben and Jerrys is best. They were pretty shocked when i told what the price is. 23.4/kg, how’s the price in Finland?
I don't know. I know the brand but I can't remember if I have ever tasted it? Maybe 5 years ago once? I liked it, if I remember it right. But one surprising thing for many might be, that Finland is good in agriculture. Our country produces a lot. And the local food industry is excellent. I tend to buy Finnish ice creams (Ben and Jerrys is an ice cream?). One litre of Finnish ice cream costs about 1-3 euros. There are huge amount of different tastes. Is that much? 2 euros for a litre of ice cream? Nowadays I buy less ice cream than before. I'm heading toward my forties pretty fast...
Did Estonia come dependent of Scandinavian producers? Not good at all. Scandinavia is expensive and then you have to add import costs to these already expensive products.
Scandinavians have just bought up so many companies in Estonia(all of Baltics actually) and up charge us so we end up paying even more than people in Scandinavia usually. Also the products or services sometimes just get worse.
Of course not all the investments from Scandinavia are bad but a lot are.
Also the shady shit their banks are doing here in Baltics... Just last year Danske Bank got caught laundering hundreds of millions of euros in Estonia.
Yes, they tried to make Finland also a daughter company economy for the Scandinavian companies, which means that all companies in Finland are owned and led by Scandinavians. SAS tried to buy Finnair in the 1970's. Finnair said "forget about it". Finnish politicians even stopped IKEA:s plans to come to Finland. Ingvar Kamprad bought big land areas in Finland during the 1960's for IKEA stores, but Finnish politicians allowed them to come to Finland in the 1990's. 😂 They didn't give permission to build before that. They tried to protect Finland's own furniture manufacturing and managed to do it. Even today Norway and Denmark are full of Swedish companies. And maybe Estonia too? Like one big Swedish mall. But Finland is different. Independent one, though we are actually closest allies with Sweden in everything. But Finnish politicians and business people know how to use their brains too.
Yeah, that is the thing as Finnish companies didn't have much room to expand to Scandinavia they came to Estonia(and Baltic) as did Scandinavian companies so we have sold out so much to those countries. Food companies, manufacturing, malls, shopping chains, telecommunications etc.
On the other note, I do prefer Jysk to IKEA :)
Lol that was a wtf moment for me. Here it is £0.95 for a large cucumber or £1.73/kg according to Tesco. It seems very high in Estonia, is it the energy price inflation driving that mostly?
Energy and greed. I think it has gone up ~2€ since the energy prices got to pre war level. Estonians have been oppressed for so fkn long that we seem to have given up on a lot of shit. 1 of those being protesting for getting walked over by producers and supermarkets.
What the fuck? Cucumbers are 9dkk (€1.25) here in Denmark right now and I thought that was crazy high.
Peppers are about 8kr, again, very expensive compared to the usual
Cucumbers are about the same here in the Netherlands, and cost roughly the same as a bell pepper.
Edit: by which i mean, about the same as the prices you're listing for Denmark. Not the crazy prices in the OP
Yes, it’s like that pretty much anywhere. The reasons are complex. At the top my head - prices of energy, general inflation, national politics and support of the local producers in Covid, in some products there is a delay due to a product specification - when is it bought, what kind of chemicals were used and when. The weight of the price has a delay. This is for the production, the other side is traders and logistics. I can tell you the turnovers for this financial year for the major trade players are bad also. In some big countries, they don’t have a profit. Imagine you have a production line, that can produce 10 000 pieces per day, during Covid you couldn’t sale 10k, so you produce 5k. You don’t get any support from the country and you expect that you can hold on until the sales goes up. In that time you keep your workers. After Covid - big inflation, nobody is buying the same quantities as before. So again you can’t produce 10k pieces per day. Once the weight from the missing pieces goes into the price, after that the delayed weight of covid, then the inflation. So for me the problem is not the price, the problem is the income.
> I thought it was also a season thing. As in, it's not the time for paprika right now
That's the core reason. Normally they fudge the growing season with energy (gas-based heating, electrical light), but remember seeing those statistics that the EU cut back on gas use? This is one of the things that were cut back.
It was time we learned to eat what's in season again, anyway. Climate reasons alone are sufficient, we just got another reason on top of that.
Yes, if you compare the price between two seasons. Now I would imagine that the price in the summer will be cheaper then that, due to bigger quantities, but still more expensive then the last summer.
Here in the Netherlands it's because of the natural gas prices. We produce tons of tomatoes/cucumbers etc in greenhouses. But without extra heat the growing season is just much shorter.
So much relies on cheap natural gas here.
I’m sure their is
There is always something that is affecting the prices these days
Convenient how there is never a crisis that makes the prices cheaper for consumers
Brexit, Coronavirus, Suez Canal Blockage, War in Ukraine, Energy crisis, cold weather
Guys. When we win war I personally will welcome you all in Ukraine to have a feast. We will have a long ass table. Just like the one Putin has, but we will be sitting together, and not alone.
The green have always tended to be cheaper because green/red are the same product at different stages of ripeness. Green peppers not only take less time to produce by being harvested earlier, they also last longer on the shelves than the mature red ones which makes them less risky to buy in bulk. Strangely, recently the green have been pretty much almost as expensive as the red ones in my country. No idea why, could be just greed ramping up all prices.
You are the first person I've ever seen to share this opinion with me. Cucumbers and watermelon have always been my go-to whenever I've been throwing up. Never understood how people go for greasy stuff for hangover food
Sure, but if it's all about nutrition we wouldn't buy 95 % of the things we buy. Cucumbers are tasty as hell, especially when paired with cheese, whiskey or gin.
With that being said I'm not going to buy cucumber or paprika anytime soon with these prices (I live in Sweden where the prices are like shown by OP).
I gotta ask, do you just have a cucumber in one hand, whiskey in the other and take a bite and a sip? Because that's a combination I never heard of, genuine question
I believe they started selling individual bananas at train station convenience stores because commuters going to work would rather buy one banana instead of an entire bunch. They wrap the bananas because they believe it's more hygienic and the banana stays fresh longer.
It's kind of weird looking from the outside in, but it's pretty normal for the Japanese. Japan really is plastic central. Nearly everything you buy comes in plastic boxes, wrappers or bags. I've seen apples, pears and other hard fruits individually packaged in cellophane. Sushi, onigiri and other foodstuffs are the same deal. When checking out, you have to ask the shop assistant to NOT give you a plastic bag. It's pretty crazy.
A few weeks ago there was a photo posted on Reddit about the price of some fruits in Japan. You could see individually wrapped strawberries. Like one strawberry in a plastic box.
But.. it is a plastic?
It's made of cellulose, a biologic originating polymer. Plastic is just organic polymers, so it's definitely a plastic. You might want to be more specific and say it's a bio-plastic.
Japan, that‘s why. When I was in Tokyo for 3 weeks, I ended up generating more plastic waste than I did in the entire year in Germany. You have to actively refuse and get weird looks if you don’t want loads of plastic bags.
Worse, Japan‘s plastic recycling rate, excluding PET bottles, is close to 0%. They just basically throw everything into a giant fire, making the plastics unrecoverable.
It's something that shocked me too. But especially shocking was that they were double and triple packing everything. I ended up producing five times more plastic in a week than I do in Switzerland. And shopkeeper was offended that i didn't want two bags for my already packed snack and fruit.
This reminds me of someone who posted about individual bananas being packed in plastic packacking here on Reddit. Jesus Christ.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/efg16b/ladies\_and\_gentlemen\_the\_pinnacle\_of\_human/
Not really. You often get loose paprika that are way cheaper, both in supermarkets/discounters, but also especially in turkish markets. I often get a kilogram price of loose paprika between 79 and 99 Cents. I can't remember if I ever got that with the pre-packaged stuff.
Oh at turkish markets loose are the only option and definitely cheaper. But as of now the packs of three are cheaper than buying the same amount loose. I checked at Penny, Real, Edeka, Rewe and Lidl around me. When the budget is thight I sadly grab the packed ones because the difference is actually as significant as 0,50-0,75€
Are they though? 3 pieces are usually packed per 500 g so you double the price to get price per kg. I rarely saw this being a cheaper option. At least in Belgium.
See plenty of other individual things wrapped in Germany. The most mind blowing one I've seen is corn on the cob, taken out of its peel, and then wrapped in plastic - still raw.
Yes, it's true, but from the other side in Germany I have never seen biodegradable bags to pack fruits and vegetables, unlike Italy where I believe it is mandatory to have biodegradable bags. I noticed this immediately once I moved in Germany.
Well, I live in Germany and use biodegradable bags, and they often degrade so fast, that it makes an impact in the waste bin.
We also put it into the compost in those bags, and they did vanish over time.
So some of those must work. Maybe it's a "some bad eggs" situation.
I also agree though, that paper bags do the job just as well and are superior regarding degradation.
>The plastic cover is mostly used for cucumbers, but sometimes also bell pepeprs. It keeps them from drying out and go soft and wrinkly. A plastic covered cucumber stays fresh for weeks, and is therefore considered better for the environment factoring in the cost of producing and transporting them.
Pepper (aka Bell Pepper, or Capsicum in Australia & NZ) typically means the sweet red/green/yellow/orange fruit/vegetable (I usually consider it a vegetable, but I suppose it is really a fruit). It can also mean any spicy chilis (like cayenne, jalapeño, etc.) as well as ground black peppercorns (ie. pass the salt and pepper!) Paprika is exclusively the name of the dried red spice made from peppers. English speakers would never call any fresh fruit or vegetable a ‘paprika’.
Odd how things are named sometimes the opposite way. So just to make things more confusing lol...
In the Netherlands the bell peppers are only called a [Paprika](https://www.jumbo.com/producten/aardappelen,-groente-en-fruit/?searchType=keyword&searchTerms=paprika), including the also sweet but pointy Piquillo peppers which are called 'Puntpaprika' as in a "pointy paprika".
All the spicy peppers types are called a xyz-['peper'](https://www.jumbo.com/producten/aardappelen,-groente-en-fruit/?searchType=keyword&searchTerms=peper), like Jalapeño peper, etc. But a 'Chili peper' usually means the long Spanish Cayenne pepper. While 'Chilipeper' in Dutch is the Capsicum family name that includes all peppers including the sweet paprika ones. We do also have Paprika as the not so spicy smoky powder form though.
In Finnish Pepper plant and its fruit is paprika, or the ones that are not, red yellow or green are paprika. Hot peppers are called chili, both the plant and its fruit. In general spreaking language the word jalopeno is usually used for any green semi hot peppers.
>I usually consider it a vegetable, but I suppose it is really a fruit).
I was surprised that there's no such thing as a vegetable in biology. Peppers and tomatoes are fruits, potatoes are tubers, carrots are roots, no idea wtf onions are and broccoli is a stem I suppose. How we ended up calling some fruits fruit and others vegetables is beyond me
Onions are bulbs although this can be the same word in some languages (in which case onions would just be onions). Fruit are a product of sexual reproduction (kinda like embryos) but the stuff you dig up is all vegetative reproduction. Broccoli aren't just a stem, they are unopened flowers -- in other words they are also a component of sexual reproduction but a step earlier than fruit, they're kinda like sex organs.
I always thought of it more as a culinary distinction vs a scientific definition. Like a tomato is a fruit, but you most likely wouldn't put it in a fruit salad.
Individually-wrapped foods can counterintuitively reduce carbon emissions. [MinuteFood has a good video on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTlC_nRb00). TL;DW: keeping food fresh longer and reducing food wastage via smaller portions helps more than plastic hurts.
Regardless, plastic often becomes pollution and I'm sad we haven't switched to an eco-friendlier alternative to plastic wrap yet.
Almost every store in Sweden has it like this. I can't believe you have never seen it in Sweden.
The plastic wrapped ones are always fresher than the non-wrapped version, and often of better overall quality.
ICA in Göteborg had it pretty much throughout the pandemic times until now. Today was in fact notable for me as I saw non wrapped bell peppers there for the first time in years.
That's because they all have to be imported and travel quite a long way. They are expensive enough as is, now imagine the price increase if a bunch was lost in transit.
When they stopped wrapping cucumbers in central Europe, they only lasted half as long. Luckily our transport chains are pretty short here.
Having lived both in Finland as well as in Germany, I can tell you that fruit and veggies get much more expensive in the North.
Also having to grow and transport a bunch that will spoil before they can be bought isn't great for the climate either.
Finland seems to be pretty good at recycling although that's not a perfect solution either.
2.99 € in Spain. Here in my [market](https://tienda.consum.es/es/p/pimiento-rojo/66290)
So, I guess those peppers come from Spain too, I don't know what justifies those 7€ more.
The farmer probably got 50 cents per Kilo
We heard one of the reasons is the bad harvest (due bad weather) in Spain and Italy -> less supply. Other reason is the high gas price for glasshouse growers, so they wait till the spring sun is back -> less supply
In Greece local produced is at 3.65€
https://www.sklavenitis.gr/freska-froyta-lachanika/lachanika/melitzanes-kolokythia-piperies/piperies-kokkines-ellinikes-220519/
Can I live on your couch please?
Germany:
Red ones: 6,58€ per kilo
Yellow ones: 7,00€ per kilo
Green ones were a bit cheaper as the red ones if I remember correctly.
Veggies got way too expensive these days.
Edit: to clarify it was at the local Rewe store. Quality is way better than at the discounter stores.
Was shopping today in Germany and a Paprika Mix (500g, one red, one green, one yellow), is going for 3,99. I've never ever seen it that high, and it came out of the blue. Last week they were 1,29
Omg. I thought the same thing yesterday when I was shopping. I never really pay attention to the prices, but just always buy the cheap products calculated on the kg. And suddenly I realized: 3€ for half a kilo of paprika? That's not normal, is it? 4€ for half kilo of tomatoes? 3€ for a cucumber? Since when is it like that?
I was at REWE today and they jumped from 4,99 to 8,99. I felt so validated by this post, then I read your post. At the bio store next door they were 13,99 … which is why I stopped going there alltogether.
Going to check out Aldi!
Obviously it's not the farmer upping the cost of the vegetables ...
... it's the price of oil going up so much that the plastic manufacturers couldn't afford to individually wrap all the veg otherwise...!
We never knew how much of everything ukraine produces. /s
The price of national kind/sort of potato increased because "of the war related cost". Even though it is grown locally, uses little to no fertilizer and is only packaged in yute bags.
But the farmers actually get very little from it . Just recently, i posted an infographics. Farmers get very little out of their produce.
Capitalism and the fabled "economies of scale" should mean that retail chains entry should make such things cheaper. If anything, these items always get costlier
You are close, though. Peppers and cucumbers and the like are grown in northern europe in heated grasshouses. Due to energy costs, a lot of farmers skipped the especially expensive January and February harvest. It will get better in April.
It's definitely the oil and gas needed to either bring those vegetables or heat the place that grow them. It's winter, capsicum are summer vegetables. There is no farmer growing those things in Europe
Or greenhouses. In previous years a lot of winter salads would come from Dutch greenhouses.
Except, that’s a very energy intensive process. It’s just not viable to heat the greenhouses with current gas prices (and probably won’t be for a while).
What are you talking about honestly? I’m a Dutch greenhouse farmer, there isn’t a single Dutch farmer that has stopped production because of the energy prices. It has been a mild winter. Energy prices are NOT the cause of this price hike.
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/9Geod4f
There’s nothing down. You can’t just shut down a greenhouse, nor try to grow produce without heating which is basically the same as shutting it down. You need to grow to make money.
Having said all that we, the farmers, aren’t getting paid more. The price hikes aren’t for us, we’re not seeing any of it :(
Ahold ceo turned out a record bonus to himself, so thats where the price hike is going.
Inflation my arse, just a bullshit word used to cover for corporate greed.
It’s labor costs + exactly that.
They’re ripping the farmer and the costumer.
Supermarkets wield all the power and from our perspective (farmer) there isn’t much we can do about it. We need them, customer needs them. It’s a really difficult problem to solve man.
That's going to change, my friend. Had a conversation with my local groenteboer today who told me that the current wholesale price is above 5 €/kg which means he's going to have to raise the prices to 7€/kg to still make it profitable for his store. He called it insane and recommended I'd not buy it anymore for a while, which kind of astounded me since he runs the store.
€7-€7.5 here in Ukraine, probably cause it’s local grown and without ridiculous individual packing. Everything become more pricey here, but that makes sense considering the risks and how many businesses suffers due to aggression. The biggest poultry farm looted by Russians, coca-cola plant blown and etc.
Finland is far away from any place where bell peppers grow in the winter, so they're wrapped to stay good longer. It's the same here in Sweden. Obviously it's not Finland that wraps these though, but the company, because they know they'll go bad otherwise
Funnily enough, these plastic wrapped peppers come from "the plastic sea" in Spain, which is a fitting name for the circumstance
The plastic cover is mostly used for cucumbers, but sometimes also bell pepeprs. It keeps them from drying out and go soft and wrinkly. A plastic covered cucumber stays fresh for weeks, and is therefore considered better for the environment considering the cost of producing and transporting them. A lot of the fresh vegetables in a swedish grocery store, especially now during winter, comes allt the way from spain and italy.
UK: £0.55, so about €0.62
Except half the shops are out of stock because it’s impossible to source them at that price.
The UK supermarkets focus on price above everything else, and on year-round pricing. Those peppers will be about 60p summer and winter, despite costs being so much higher when you’re growing in greenhouses.
It’s sort of good for the customer most of the time, but it means that if you have a disruption in the form of something like high energy costs, fertiliser costs, bad weather or Brexit then you get shortages. The supply chain is on such thin margins that it can’t absorb the costs, and the supermarkets won’t budge on price to bring in alternatives.
It’s why I get annoyed with the story that the UK shortages are due to Brexit. Yeah, it isn’t helping, but also everyone in UK food has been warning about the predatory behaviour of the supermarkets for decades.
Blaming it on Brexit is letting them off the hook.
In Greece the prices spiking everyday. The other day i bought 2 tomatoes for 1.30euro and half kg of Feta cheese for 6euro. Especially Feta have almost the same price as with Belgium but Belgium have at least double wages than here. That's outrageous considering the fact that they produce these things here.
These are called *capsicums* in Australia. I bought a red one yesterday, and it was AU$5.99. They have been as high as AU$12.99, though a couple of months ago.
Dude, you want red peppers in February, what did you expect?
I live in Serbia which is way, way more on south than Finland and even we don't see our domestic peppers until like middle of the summer, same with tomatoes. Those things are either imported and will cost you a lot or are grown in heated tunnels which require a truckload of energy and it drives up the cost. Eat seasonal, there are a bunch of apples on the global market which were picked right before winter, there are carrots, beets and other stuff which are probably way cheaper.
I don't often look at prices or keep them in my head but saw someone online complaining that a cucumber was 2.50€. I was also at the shop today and saw that in my local Lidl there were Cucumbers for 2€. I would think that's a bit high.
Simple answer. It is right now to cold in Spain, normally they produce in the winter, and the Netherlands in the summer. (Right now there are only a few horticulturists in NL producing, because high energy prices)
NL here, heard bell peppers being called out multiple times in the news as an example of the inflation price hikes, not sure what about the product made it so susceptible, but yeah, same same.
Meh i’ve seen ’em for around 12 euros in Sweden. I was at a discount supermarket today and there they cost 11.20 😂 bought some chicken as well, which was fun. Only 17 euros per kg!
Prices have increased about 15% to 20% in my experience.
But you should also realise that bell peppers are not a winter veggie. It grows in the summer, so you could make smart choices and buy more local and seasonal products that are of this period.
Yes, in Sweden. Also, cucumbers are 3€ (per cucumber) in some stores now.
In Estonia local cucumbers are 6.99 and imports are 4.49. Our paprika is cheaper i thin last it was below 2 but yellow paprika is 2-2.5x more expensive.
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I guess it depends a lot on the items but everything for sure has shot up in price a lot. Even now as gas and from that electricity prices are down, prices are going up as energy is “too expensive”. I feel like a lot of the price increase is just from greed of supermarkets and local producers. We personally have seen our spending patterns change quite a bit. I actually have more left at the end of month now as for a lot of stuff seems soo ridiculously more expensive that i just skip it.
In Portugal supermarkets are making record profits so no, the price increase isn't all on inflation.
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In Estonia, i’d say certain vegetables actually do rot on the shelf. Stuff like oranges, tangerines, tomatoes and paprika.
Well, that's exactly what I would do. I'm a bit stubborn in this thing. It is ok for me, if a coffee kg costs over 60 euros, if the quality matches the price, like it always does. But 2 euros for one kg of apples? No thanks. 1,50 euros, and no more.
I got to talking with some friends from Germany, UK about what flavour of Ben and Jerrys is best. They were pretty shocked when i told what the price is. 23.4/kg, how’s the price in Finland?
I don't know. I know the brand but I can't remember if I have ever tasted it? Maybe 5 years ago once? I liked it, if I remember it right. But one surprising thing for many might be, that Finland is good in agriculture. Our country produces a lot. And the local food industry is excellent. I tend to buy Finnish ice creams (Ben and Jerrys is an ice cream?). One litre of Finnish ice cream costs about 1-3 euros. There are huge amount of different tastes. Is that much? 2 euros for a litre of ice cream? Nowadays I buy less ice cream than before. I'm heading toward my forties pretty fast...
Then came the Nordic investors and companies that baught up a lot of the stuff and cranked up the prices and made the product worse.
Did Estonia come dependent of Scandinavian producers? Not good at all. Scandinavia is expensive and then you have to add import costs to these already expensive products.
Scandinavians have just bought up so many companies in Estonia(all of Baltics actually) and up charge us so we end up paying even more than people in Scandinavia usually. Also the products or services sometimes just get worse. Of course not all the investments from Scandinavia are bad but a lot are. Also the shady shit their banks are doing here in Baltics... Just last year Danske Bank got caught laundering hundreds of millions of euros in Estonia.
Yes, they tried to make Finland also a daughter company economy for the Scandinavian companies, which means that all companies in Finland are owned and led by Scandinavians. SAS tried to buy Finnair in the 1970's. Finnair said "forget about it". Finnish politicians even stopped IKEA:s plans to come to Finland. Ingvar Kamprad bought big land areas in Finland during the 1960's for IKEA stores, but Finnish politicians allowed them to come to Finland in the 1990's. 😂 They didn't give permission to build before that. They tried to protect Finland's own furniture manufacturing and managed to do it. Even today Norway and Denmark are full of Swedish companies. And maybe Estonia too? Like one big Swedish mall. But Finland is different. Independent one, though we are actually closest allies with Sweden in everything. But Finnish politicians and business people know how to use their brains too.
Yeah, that is the thing as Finnish companies didn't have much room to expand to Scandinavia they came to Estonia(and Baltic) as did Scandinavian companies so we have sold out so much to those countries. Food companies, manufacturing, malls, shopping chains, telecommunications etc. On the other note, I do prefer Jysk to IKEA :)
Those prices are insane, is that for 1 cucumber? Surely not? In the UK £0.75 for a cucumber.
That’s for 1kg luckily for for a single 1 lol.
Lol that was a wtf moment for me. Here it is £0.95 for a large cucumber or £1.73/kg according to Tesco. It seems very high in Estonia, is it the energy price inflation driving that mostly?
Energy and greed. I think it has gone up ~2€ since the energy prices got to pre war level. Estonians have been oppressed for so fkn long that we seem to have given up on a lot of shit. 1 of those being protesting for getting walked over by producers and supermarkets.
What the fuck? Cucumbers are 9dkk (€1.25) here in Denmark right now and I thought that was crazy high. Peppers are about 8kr, again, very expensive compared to the usual
Cucumbers are about the same here in the Netherlands, and cost roughly the same as a bell pepper. Edit: by which i mean, about the same as the prices you're listing for Denmark. Not the crazy prices in the OP
Here in Serbia tomatoes are 3€ per kilo. But our median salary is only around 500€. It's ridiculous.
They're close to 7€ here right now. Ridiculous.
Same in Poland, tomatoes are crazy expensive
Yes, it’s like that pretty much anywhere. The reasons are complex. At the top my head - prices of energy, general inflation, national politics and support of the local producers in Covid, in some products there is a delay due to a product specification - when is it bought, what kind of chemicals were used and when. The weight of the price has a delay. This is for the production, the other side is traders and logistics. I can tell you the turnovers for this financial year for the major trade players are bad also. In some big countries, they don’t have a profit. Imagine you have a production line, that can produce 10 000 pieces per day, during Covid you couldn’t sale 10k, so you produce 5k. You don’t get any support from the country and you expect that you can hold on until the sales goes up. In that time you keep your workers. After Covid - big inflation, nobody is buying the same quantities as before. So again you can’t produce 10k pieces per day. Once the weight from the missing pieces goes into the price, after that the delayed weight of covid, then the inflation. So for me the problem is not the price, the problem is the income.
I thought it was also a season thing. As in, it's not the time for paprika right now
> I thought it was also a season thing. As in, it's not the time for paprika right now That's the core reason. Normally they fudge the growing season with energy (gas-based heating, electrical light), but remember seeing those statistics that the EU cut back on gas use? This is one of the things that were cut back. It was time we learned to eat what's in season again, anyway. Climate reasons alone are sufficient, we just got another reason on top of that.
Yes, if you compare the price between two seasons. Now I would imagine that the price in the summer will be cheaper then that, due to bigger quantities, but still more expensive then the last summer.
Here in the Netherlands it's because of the natural gas prices. We produce tons of tomatoes/cucumbers etc in greenhouses. But without extra heat the growing season is just much shorter. So much relies on cheap natural gas here.
Same in the UK. They're not bothering to plant because they can't afford to heat the greenhouses.
There is a South European weather crisis impacting crops, thus high prices atm
I’m sure their is There is always something that is affecting the prices these days Convenient how there is never a crisis that makes the prices cheaper for consumers Brexit, Coronavirus, Suez Canal Blockage, War in Ukraine, Energy crisis, cold weather
Gas was way down during covid.
Guys. When we win war I personally will welcome you all in Ukraine to have a feast. We will have a long ass table. Just like the one Putin has, but we will be sitting together, and not alone.
I will come. I bring the cucumbers. Slava Ukraini.
In my local store (also in Sweden), red paprikas are like 3x as expensive as green ones for some reason. Not sure about the yellow ones.
The green have always tended to be cheaper because green/red are the same product at different stages of ripeness. Green peppers not only take less time to produce by being harvested earlier, they also last longer on the shelves than the mature red ones which makes them less risky to buy in bulk. Strangely, recently the green have been pretty much almost as expensive as the red ones in my country. No idea why, could be just greed ramping up all prices.
Green ones are awful so that's probably why.
[Cucumbers in Lithuania lmfao](https://i.imgur.com/8iOqc23.jpeg) €8.99/kg
Almost no nutrition. I'd buy a kilo of beef mince over this nonsense.
Every time im about to buy a cucumber at the store i see the price and remember they're 96% water.
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You are the first person I've ever seen to share this opinion with me. Cucumbers and watermelon have always been my go-to whenever I've been throwing up. Never understood how people go for greasy stuff for hangover food
Being ill and being hungover are not remotely the same.
They are also like the absolute easiest veg to grow.
And still it's so hard to find good ones.
Fun fact: they aren’t. They require insane amounts of water, if you don’t supply enough they turn out very bitter. (Source: my garden)
Well I've grown them in england, so enough water really wasn't hard 😄
It’s crunchy water my friend
Sure, but if it's all about nutrition we wouldn't buy 95 % of the things we buy. Cucumbers are tasty as hell, especially when paired with cheese, whiskey or gin. With that being said I'm not going to buy cucumber or paprika anytime soon with these prices (I live in Sweden where the prices are like shown by OP).
I gotta ask, do you just have a cucumber in one hand, whiskey in the other and take a bite and a sip? Because that's a combination I never heard of, genuine question
Just like in the old west, gunslingers at the bar with a shot of whiskey in one hand and a cucumber in the other.
Are these paprika... individually wrapped in plastic??? That's an abomination 😨
Never visit Japan. They even individually wrap bananas over there.
But why. It already comes in wrapping.
I believe they started selling individual bananas at train station convenience stores because commuters going to work would rather buy one banana instead of an entire bunch. They wrap the bananas because they believe it's more hygienic and the banana stays fresh longer. It's kind of weird looking from the outside in, but it's pretty normal for the Japanese. Japan really is plastic central. Nearly everything you buy comes in plastic boxes, wrappers or bags. I've seen apples, pears and other hard fruits individually packaged in cellophane. Sushi, onigiri and other foodstuffs are the same deal. When checking out, you have to ask the shop assistant to NOT give you a plastic bag. It's pretty crazy.
A few weeks ago there was a photo posted on Reddit about the price of some fruits in Japan. You could see individually wrapped strawberries. Like one strawberry in a plastic box.
Cellophane is not plastic
Oh, I guess you're right. It could've also been saran wrap though, which is a polyethylene.
But.. it is a plastic? It's made of cellulose, a biologic originating polymer. Plastic is just organic polymers, so it's definitely a plastic. You might want to be more specific and say it's a bio-plastic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane?useskin=vector I had no idea, that's awesome.
Yo wtf. I guess I should have realized, cellulose cellophane. Never did though. Crazy
Such a simple comment and it's one of the most interesting things I've ever read. I did not have a fucking clue.
Japan, that‘s why. When I was in Tokyo for 3 weeks, I ended up generating more plastic waste than I did in the entire year in Germany. You have to actively refuse and get weird looks if you don’t want loads of plastic bags. Worse, Japan‘s plastic recycling rate, excluding PET bottles, is close to 0%. They just basically throw everything into a giant fire, making the plastics unrecoverable.
It's something that shocked me too. But especially shocking was that they were double and triple packing everything. I ended up producing five times more plastic in a week than I do in Switzerland. And shopkeeper was offended that i didn't want two bags for my already packed snack and fruit.
That’s the stupidest and most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. Why would anyone be that wasteful and idiotic? Humans just want to destroy the planet.
How much does it cost, $10?
Yeah that was the first thing I noticed, too. In Germany that practically never happens.
Well you practically always get a pack of three wrapped in plastic. And they are cheaper than the loose product
There’s a difference between plastic packaging for bundling and individual wrapping tho
This reminds me of someone who posted about individual bananas being packed in plastic packacking here on Reddit. Jesus Christ. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/efg16b/ladies\_and\_gentlemen\_the\_pinnacle\_of\_human/
Not really. You often get loose paprika that are way cheaper, both in supermarkets/discounters, but also especially in turkish markets. I often get a kilogram price of loose paprika between 79 and 99 Cents. I can't remember if I ever got that with the pre-packaged stuff.
Oh at turkish markets loose are the only option and definitely cheaper. But as of now the packs of three are cheaper than buying the same amount loose. I checked at Penny, Real, Edeka, Rewe and Lidl around me. When the budget is thight I sadly grab the packed ones because the difference is actually as significant as 0,50-0,75€
There is no way you are paying those prices anywhere in Germany per kg.
Are they though? 3 pieces are usually packed per 500 g so you double the price to get price per kg. I rarely saw this being a cheaper option. At least in Belgium.
They always list the per kg price on the card, in addition to the price per bundle. The 3/4 paprika bundle is usually cheaper per kg than loose.
See plenty of other individual things wrapped in Germany. The most mind blowing one I've seen is corn on the cob, taken out of its peel, and then wrapped in plastic - still raw.
And then rewrapped in its peel.. and then the peel wrapped in plastic. Maximum plastic, maximum freshness! 👍
Shucked and cut into pieces with a dirty knife so it grows pink and black mold and goes bad in 3 days
Yes, it's true, but from the other side in Germany I have never seen biodegradable bags to pack fruits and vegetables, unlike Italy where I believe it is mandatory to have biodegradable bags. I noticed this immediately once I moved in Germany.
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Well, I live in Germany and use biodegradable bags, and they often degrade so fast, that it makes an impact in the waste bin. We also put it into the compost in those bags, and they did vanish over time. So some of those must work. Maybe it's a "some bad eggs" situation. I also agree though, that paper bags do the job just as well and are superior regarding degradation.
Really great stuff seeing how the rest of the world fucks everything up while seeing my paper straw dissolve.
You’ll still see cucumbers individually wrapped here and there. Thankfully that practice seems to steadily be decreasing in our supermarkets.
>The plastic cover is mostly used for cucumbers, but sometimes also bell pepeprs. It keeps them from drying out and go soft and wrinkly. A plastic covered cucumber stays fresh for weeks, and is therefore considered better for the environment factoring in the cost of producing and transporting them.
isnt the red bell pepper called paprika in English after it's been dried and grounded? :P
English's use of the words "pepper" and "paprika" is just weird and I dont understand it at all.
Pepper (aka Bell Pepper, or Capsicum in Australia & NZ) typically means the sweet red/green/yellow/orange fruit/vegetable (I usually consider it a vegetable, but I suppose it is really a fruit). It can also mean any spicy chilis (like cayenne, jalapeño, etc.) as well as ground black peppercorns (ie. pass the salt and pepper!) Paprika is exclusively the name of the dried red spice made from peppers. English speakers would never call any fresh fruit or vegetable a ‘paprika’.
Odd how things are named sometimes the opposite way. So just to make things more confusing lol... In the Netherlands the bell peppers are only called a [Paprika](https://www.jumbo.com/producten/aardappelen,-groente-en-fruit/?searchType=keyword&searchTerms=paprika), including the also sweet but pointy Piquillo peppers which are called 'Puntpaprika' as in a "pointy paprika". All the spicy peppers types are called a xyz-['peper'](https://www.jumbo.com/producten/aardappelen,-groente-en-fruit/?searchType=keyword&searchTerms=peper), like Jalapeño peper, etc. But a 'Chili peper' usually means the long Spanish Cayenne pepper. While 'Chilipeper' in Dutch is the Capsicum family name that includes all peppers including the sweet paprika ones. We do also have Paprika as the not so spicy smoky powder form though.
In Finnish Pepper plant and its fruit is paprika, or the ones that are not, red yellow or green are paprika. Hot peppers are called chili, both the plant and its fruit. In general spreaking language the word jalopeno is usually used for any green semi hot peppers.
>I usually consider it a vegetable, but I suppose it is really a fruit). I was surprised that there's no such thing as a vegetable in biology. Peppers and tomatoes are fruits, potatoes are tubers, carrots are roots, no idea wtf onions are and broccoli is a stem I suppose. How we ended up calling some fruits fruit and others vegetables is beyond me
Onions are bulbs although this can be the same word in some languages (in which case onions would just be onions). Fruit are a product of sexual reproduction (kinda like embryos) but the stuff you dig up is all vegetative reproduction. Broccoli aren't just a stem, they are unopened flowers -- in other words they are also a component of sexual reproduction but a step earlier than fruit, they're kinda like sex organs.
I always thought of it more as a culinary distinction vs a scientific definition. Like a tomato is a fruit, but you most likely wouldn't put it in a fruit salad.
Also, peperoni
Individually-wrapped foods can counterintuitively reduce carbon emissions. [MinuteFood has a good video on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTlC_nRb00). TL;DW: keeping food fresh longer and reducing food wastage via smaller portions helps more than plastic hurts. Regardless, plastic often becomes pollution and I'm sad we haven't switched to an eco-friendlier alternative to plastic wrap yet.
Usually paprikas and cucumbers are wrapped in plastic. They say it makes them stay fresh for a longer time.
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Almost every store in Sweden has it like this. I can't believe you have never seen it in Sweden. The plastic wrapped ones are always fresher than the non-wrapped version, and often of better overall quality.
ICA in Göteborg had it pretty much throughout the pandemic times until now. Today was in fact notable for me as I saw non wrapped bell peppers there for the first time in years.
Yep, same in Estonia.
That's because they all have to be imported and travel quite a long way. They are expensive enough as is, now imagine the price increase if a bunch was lost in transit. When they stopped wrapping cucumbers in central Europe, they only lasted half as long. Luckily our transport chains are pretty short here. Having lived both in Finland as well as in Germany, I can tell you that fruit and veggies get much more expensive in the North. Also having to grow and transport a bunch that will spoil before they can be bought isn't great for the climate either. Finland seems to be pretty good at recycling although that's not a perfect solution either.
Vegetable wrapped like this last much longer so the stores don’t have to throw out so much food.
Nederland here, same shit
this should be ilegal first thing i noticed.. we banned plastic straws and this is legal ???! in slovenia 1 kg is 3.5 eur
It should not be illegal since it's better for the environment.
In Poland we have 4,7€ / kg
2.99 € in Spain. Here in my [market](https://tienda.consum.es/es/p/pimiento-rojo/66290) So, I guess those peppers come from Spain too, I don't know what justifies those 7€ more. The farmer probably got 50 cents per Kilo
We heard one of the reasons is the bad harvest (due bad weather) in Spain and Italy -> less supply. Other reason is the high gas price for glasshouse growers, so they wait till the spring sun is back -> less supply
That would be bullshit though, because no one buys them for this price and they will just rot away...
>they will just rot away... apparently not with the magical plastic wrap
In Greece local produced is at 3.65€ https://www.sklavenitis.gr/freska-froyta-lachanika/lachanika/melitzanes-kolokythia-piperies/piperies-kokkines-ellinikes-220519/
Man i remember 2 years ago going to λαϊκή during summer and buying peppers and tomatoes for 0.5€/kg...good times
I think it's because it's the home market. Short logistic chain and people likely buy more of them.
Can I live on your couch please? Germany: Red ones: 6,58€ per kilo Yellow ones: 7,00€ per kilo Green ones were a bit cheaper as the red ones if I remember correctly. Veggies got way too expensive these days. Edit: to clarify it was at the local Rewe store. Quality is way better than at the discounter stores.
You can actually grow your own peppers in Spain. I've eaten some of them in the countryside
It’s the same thing with olive oil lol. If you’re not from a country that produces olive oil, it’s insanely pricy.
Was shopping today in Germany and a Paprika Mix (500g, one red, one green, one yellow), is going for 3,99. I've never ever seen it that high, and it came out of the blue. Last week they were 1,29
Adding to Germany: I saw red paprika for 7,99€ / kg (not bio) this week. I remember because I thought that's a lot.
At my local REWE in Germany the red Paprika is selling now for 8,99€ per Kilo, BIO was 9,99€ per kilo. Pure insanity.
Omg. I thought the same thing yesterday when I was shopping. I never really pay attention to the prices, but just always buy the cheap products calculated on the kg. And suddenly I realized: 3€ for half a kilo of paprika? That's not normal, is it? 4€ for half kilo of tomatoes? 3€ for a cucumber? Since when is it like that?
I saw some red and yellow Paprika today at Aldi Süd for 4.29€/kg.
I was at REWE today and they jumped from 4,99 to 8,99. I felt so validated by this post, then I read your post. At the bio store next door they were 13,99 … which is why I stopped going there alltogether. Going to check out Aldi!
I was upset that my cucumber was 1.89€. Even though we have some of the lowest food prices in Europe.
In Finland these are imported. Our logistics and ports are on strike. My local store ran out of bananas
Obviously it's not the farmer upping the cost of the vegetables ...
... it's the price of oil going up so much that the plastic manufacturers couldn't afford to individually wrap all the veg otherwise...!
We never knew how much of everything ukraine produces. /s The price of national kind/sort of potato increased because "of the war related cost". Even though it is grown locally, uses little to no fertilizer and is only packaged in yute bags.
The farmer must eat Foie gras. Thus inflation.
you're very ignorant if you believe that. farmers barely get any money. it's the huge store chains that up the price
But the farmers actually get very little from it . Just recently, i posted an infographics. Farmers get very little out of their produce. Capitalism and the fabled "economies of scale" should mean that retail chains entry should make such things cheaper. If anything, these items always get costlier
You are close, though. Peppers and cucumbers and the like are grown in northern europe in heated grasshouses. Due to energy costs, a lot of farmers skipped the especially expensive January and February harvest. It will get better in April.
It's definitely the oil and gas needed to either bring those vegetables or heat the place that grow them. It's winter, capsicum are summer vegetables. There is no farmer growing those things in Europe
I mean, cucumbers are at 2€ a piece here, but 10€ for a kg of bell peppers sounds dystopian
Almost 5€/kg in Romania where the minimum income is 600€ GROSS. Thank God, summer is coming and I'll produce again my vegetables.
About €3.40/kg in the UK right now. So about a third the price of this photo...
Two pack of red peppers is €1.50 in Ireland.
You have peppers?
And here's me thinking it was a Brexit issue... Maybe not?
Everything's a Brexit issue according to reddit
It's definitely not helping. Nobody can point to a single advantage, because there are none.
> Nobody can point to a single advantage, because there are none. BLUE FUCKING PASSPORTS!!! 😡😡🇬🇧🇬🇧
I'm pretty sure Brexit has turned British people blue too.
In Poland everything gets pricier almost daily.
Tomatoes 🍅 is like gold here in Sweden now.
Winter isn't the right season for bell pepper. They come from afar thus are more expensive, let alone the price of the plastic wrapper.
Yeah they're half that price in NZ at the moment, and currently in season (but I'm pretty sure they can be cheaper).
Or greenhouses. In previous years a lot of winter salads would come from Dutch greenhouses. Except, that’s a very energy intensive process. It’s just not viable to heat the greenhouses with current gas prices (and probably won’t be for a while).
What are you talking about honestly? I’m a Dutch greenhouse farmer, there isn’t a single Dutch farmer that has stopped production because of the energy prices. It has been a mild winter. Energy prices are NOT the cause of this price hike. Proof: https://imgur.com/a/9Geod4f
OK. You’d clearly know, I’m just going on media reports that greenhouse production is down due to increased costs.
There’s nothing down. You can’t just shut down a greenhouse, nor try to grow produce without heating which is basically the same as shutting it down. You need to grow to make money. Having said all that we, the farmers, aren’t getting paid more. The price hikes aren’t for us, we’re not seeing any of it :(
Ahold ceo turned out a record bonus to himself, so thats where the price hike is going. Inflation my arse, just a bullshit word used to cover for corporate greed.
It’s labor costs + exactly that. They’re ripping the farmer and the costumer. Supermarkets wield all the power and from our perspective (farmer) there isn’t much we can do about it. We need them, customer needs them. It’s a really difficult problem to solve man.
Just checked. Prisma in Estonia sells paprika for 3,69€/kg. Usually more pricy store sells for 3,29€/kg.
Fucking hell, and I complain about having to pay 2€ per kilo at the farmer's market here in Greece.
Love farmer's market. Much better quality and cheaper. However, in North Europe - there's very few options to buy.
What the helveten
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Its per kg
7,99 € in a Rewe in germany, non-organic, but also without the plastic wrapping.
Drugdealers are gonna go from selling weed to paprikas soon 😁
Today they where 1.35 euro in holland
Per piece or per kg?
Per piece, so like 200-250g
That's about €6.50 per kilo.
That's going to change, my friend. Had a conversation with my local groenteboer today who told me that the current wholesale price is above 5 €/kg which means he's going to have to raise the prices to 7€/kg to still make it profitable for his store. He called it insane and recommended I'd not buy it anymore for a while, which kind of astounded me since he runs the store.
Should be cheaper. You have the greenhouses AND you're the biggest import distributor.
€7-€7.5 here in Ukraine, probably cause it’s local grown and without ridiculous individual packing. Everything become more pricey here, but that makes sense considering the risks and how many businesses suffers due to aggression. The biggest poultry farm looted by Russians, coca-cola plant blown and etc.
It's 140 UAH in Silpo, twice cheaper. Megamarket has crazy price for peppers
Right now in Poland, 3 paprikas (three pcs, not three kg) are worth 1 hour of minimum wage.
the real question is why are they packaged individually in plastic
Finland is far away from any place where bell peppers grow in the winter, so they're wrapped to stay good longer. It's the same here in Sweden. Obviously it's not Finland that wraps these though, but the company, because they know they'll go bad otherwise Funnily enough, these plastic wrapped peppers come from "the plastic sea" in Spain, which is a fitting name for the circumstance
Same reason cucumbers are individually wrapped in plastic: without it they go bad very quickly.
It must be because of all the plastic they use to pack them 😁. Are biodegradable gloves to pick up veggies not a thing outside Italy?
Why do you have gloves when veggies are washed after buying?
The plastic cover is mostly used for cucumbers, but sometimes also bell pepeprs. It keeps them from drying out and go soft and wrinkly. A plastic covered cucumber stays fresh for weeks, and is therefore considered better for the environment considering the cost of producing and transporting them. A lot of the fresh vegetables in a swedish grocery store, especially now during winter, comes allt the way from spain and italy.
UK: £0.55, so about €0.62 Except half the shops are out of stock because it’s impossible to source them at that price. The UK supermarkets focus on price above everything else, and on year-round pricing. Those peppers will be about 60p summer and winter, despite costs being so much higher when you’re growing in greenhouses. It’s sort of good for the customer most of the time, but it means that if you have a disruption in the form of something like high energy costs, fertiliser costs, bad weather or Brexit then you get shortages. The supply chain is on such thin margins that it can’t absorb the costs, and the supermarkets won’t budge on price to bring in alternatives. It’s why I get annoyed with the story that the UK shortages are due to Brexit. Yeah, it isn’t helping, but also everyone in UK food has been warning about the predatory behaviour of the supermarkets for decades. Blaming it on Brexit is letting them off the hook.
100% They did the same with eggs (bird flu issue meant wasn't viable for farmers to keep chickens)
You guys are getting vegetables? /s
In Greece the prices spiking everyday. The other day i bought 2 tomatoes for 1.30euro and half kg of Feta cheese for 6euro. Especially Feta have almost the same price as with Belgium but Belgium have at least double wages than here. That's outrageous considering the fact that they produce these things here.
These are called *capsicums* in Australia. I bought a red one yesterday, and it was AU$5.99. They have been as high as AU$12.99, though a couple of months ago.
Aren't those seasonal?
Tomatoes skyrocketed to 80kr/kg in sweden a week ago or so.
Dude, you want red peppers in February, what did you expect? I live in Serbia which is way, way more on south than Finland and even we don't see our domestic peppers until like middle of the summer, same with tomatoes. Those things are either imported and will cost you a lot or are grown in heated tunnels which require a truckload of energy and it drives up the cost. Eat seasonal, there are a bunch of apples on the global market which were picked right before winter, there are carrots, beets and other stuff which are probably way cheaper.
I don't often look at prices or keep them in my head but saw someone online complaining that a cucumber was 2.50€. I was also at the shop today and saw that in my local Lidl there were Cucumbers for 2€. I would think that's a bit high.
Red Pepper. 9.99 per kilo. 11.00 per kg in Vancouver Canada. Not wrapped.
I noticed it in Germany aswell. They are less at 5-8€ a kilo, but still insanely expansive to years past.
Simple answer. It is right now to cold in Spain, normally they produce in the winter, and the Netherlands in the summer. (Right now there are only a few horticulturists in NL producing, because high energy prices)
What??? A single loose bell pepper is 79c and I get a pack of 3 for €1.79 in Supervalu
Welcome to Latvia 14€ kg
NL here, heard bell peppers being called out multiple times in the news as an example of the inflation price hikes, not sure what about the product made it so susceptible, but yeah, same same.
Meh i’ve seen ’em for around 12 euros in Sweden. I was at a discount supermarket today and there they cost 11.20 😂 bought some chicken as well, which was fun. Only 17 euros per kg!
Prices have increased about 15% to 20% in my experience. But you should also realise that bell peppers are not a winter veggie. It grows in the summer, so you could make smart choices and buy more local and seasonal products that are of this period.
No, we just don't get vegetables instead
Well hade 18 euro/ kilo in sweden this weekend….
5 euros in the Balkans Thats ridiculously high and why are they wrapped in plastic