The pickle is languishing …
As the epidemic continues around the world, the economic effects begin to be felt when, beyond financial issues, technical and climate issues are over-added.
This is the case at this stage for India and its usually rich pickle crops at this time of year, which have already been affected at the beginning of the year by heavy rains that have ravaged much of the seedings carried out by farmers especially in Tamil Nadu and which at this stage also have to bear the current difficulties of local factories in the face of logistical constraints to export. Faced with this situation and the reassurance of international customers to have to pay exorbitant freight rates many Indian factories have been also discouraged at this stage to renew their seeding contracts which are postponed at the time when the monsoon will bring its share of rains during April. The current harvest will close by the end of February for the first time since 1995…
It remains to be hoped that farmers will get their heart back to work by being paid for their production, that climate change will not once again disrupt production cycles, that shipping companies become more reasonable and that international customers do not take advantage of the situation to turn away from 27 years of production and make sweet eyes to possible new origins. The equation remains complicated!
