See the best time to buy fruits and vegetables

With inflation putting pressure on food prices, a good way out is to take advantage of the seasonality of fruits and vegetables, as prices fall and quality rises.

“When production takes place at the right time, it comes in better conditions for the physiology of that plant and it will produce more easily”, says agronomist Gabriel Vicente Bitencourt de Almeida, head of the section of the horticultural quality center at Ceagesp (Company of Warehouses and General Warehouses of São Paulo).

The IPCA, an index calculated by the IBGE and which is considered the official inflation, accumulated a variation of 10.06% in 2021. The group of expenses with food and beverages increased by 7.94% in the period.

Ceagesp has a calendar that can help consumers plan their purchases. It applies mainly to São Paulo — other states have their particularities. In general, the traditional abundance of a product in a certain period does not mean that there will be no availability in other months, but the chances of prices rising are greater.

The combination of technical knowledge and technology helps rural producers escape seasonal issues such as temperature, humidity and rainfall. This is the case, for example, of grape and guava production, which are stimulated through pruning techniques.

Others, such as apples, have a production peak from the middle of the year. However, the fruit adapts well to refrigeration, which guarantees supply throughout the months.

Mangoes from São Paulo are more abundant at the end of the year, but the semi-arid varieties are in production for most of the year. These specificities make the São Paulo grocery stores and fairs have cheaper mangoes in the summer, because instead of the fruit traveling from the Northeast to the Southeast, it comes from local production.

The fruits most affected by seasonality, that is, production more complicated out of season, are stone fruits, such as peach, plum and nectarine. Lychee, a fruit of Asian origin, has been gaining ground in the basket of end-of-year products and the annual harvest always starts between the end of November and the beginning of December.

Vegetables, on the other hand, tend to be more expensive in the summer due to the combination of heat and rain, conditions that are very favorable to the proliferation of fungi and bacteria. “There is a lot of pruning and irrigation work, but the main ones involve these issues”, says the agronomist. “In winter, if there is no frost, it is easier to produce.”

Other important products in the diet of Brazilians, such as potatoes and tomatoes, are produced throughout the year. When they are not in the best production ranges, they are more expensive because the producer also spends more.

The head of Ceagesp’s horticultural quality center explains that potato production, for example, is maintained because there is demand, even if prices rise. To be able to plant, however, it is necessary that production, in the summer, migrate to higher regions.

“This is a general rule. When it is favorable, the plant produces more and cheaper, the product will have higher quality and the producer will use less chemicals.”

Another reference that consumers can use to decide what to prioritize at each time of year is the hortifruti calendar prepared by Cepea (Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics), an institute linked to Esalq (School of Agriculture “Luiz de Queiroz “), from the University of São Paulo.

This, however, has the opposite function to that of Ceagesp, as it is aimed at rural producers. For example, for salad tomatoes, the month of March is considered a period under pressure from prices – and then the consumer may need to reduce consumption of this fruit to keep the budget in balance. For onions, the period between March and July is when the vegetable will be more valued, according to the Cepea scale, based on the seasonality verified in Ceagesp.

2021 was not the best year for the vegetable sector. According to the HF Brasil yearbook, produced by Cepea, there was a 3.7% drop in producing areas compared to the pre-pandemic period, and 1.3% compared to 2020.

Industrial production of potatoes and tomatoes grew, but fresh vegetables declined. “The economic uncertainties in 2021, combined with the considerable increase in production costs, limited investment by vegetable producers, especially in the domestic in natura segment”, says the publication.