An apple orchard in eastern Slovakia (source: TASR)
The self-sufficiency of Slovakia in producing fruits is very low when the imports of this commodity significantly exceed exports. Said in a very simplified way, there is one exported fruit for six imported fruits, wrote the analyst of the Slovak Farmers Cooperative (SFD), Eva Sadovská, in her analysis, the TASR newswire reported.
A Slovak consumes 60-70 kg of fruits and fruit products annually on average. But this contains a large amount of imported fruits and these are not only citrus fruits. This is because Slovakia also imports apples even though it has a suitable climate for their production.
Experts consider Slovakia, along with Austria, Switzerland or northern Italy, to be countries with the best conditions for growing fruits from a mild climatic zone. Slovakia has huge potential in fruit production, but so far it has not been fully used.
Based on data of the Central Control and Testing Institute in Agriculture in Bratislava, more than 12 million fruit trees and bushes, whose harvest exceeded 38,000 tonnes of fruits, were registered in Slovakia for 2017.
