“Three pieces for one lari… Okay, take four… Well, okay, make it five!” Who among us has not heard these phrases in winter, which are often uttered by sellers offering lemons to customers? Georgian lemons are very tasty, juicy and aromatic. Now a kilogram of lemons costs 10 lari on the market and it is almost impossible to find those grown in Georgia. Until the fruits of the new harvest appear, the market price of lemons will be very high and, given the demand in the country, we may reach another record. What? Record import of lemons from abroad…
Lemons are among the top ten products whose prices have soared to record levels in Georgia this year. One kilogram of these citrus fruits costs importers an average of 70 cents (without taxes), i.e. lemons cost about 1.90 lari, but on the shelves they are sold at 10 lari per kilogram. Margins that go beyond all norms and are completely unrealistic are, of course, an urgent problem and a topic for a separate discussion. However, what is even more worrying about lemons is that in the first six months of this year we have already imported a record amount. And this in conditions when Georgia will soon be literally flooded with lemons and they will start to be exported from here at a bargain price.
“Let’s say there are five lemons in one kilogram. It turns out that the price of one lemon is now 2 lari, and in the middle of the season we buy them for 20 tetri, which is ten times cheaper. Yes, in season, and now suppliers sell them to us at almost the same low price, because this citrus fruit is profitable both in season and out of season. Another thing is that Georgian entrepreneurs are trying to make ten times more profit. In six months we import 2,000 tons of lemons, which is enough to store three refrigerators of 1,000 tons each. This should be enough for the Georgian market. The construction of such a refrigerator costs an average of 1.5 million euros, and the owner has a real chance of recouping the investment in just one or two seasons. However, no one is willing to set up such a refrigeration facility, despite the subsidies that the state promises to provide. The reason is simple: we are used to importing everything from abroad. It is much easier to live like this: buy and sell. Why bother once again, get nervous, run around, hire people? Turkey is close, there is also South Africa (?!), Egypt, from there we buy lemons.” – explains an expert in this field frankly.
It is not even funny when lemons are imported to Georgia from South Africa – citrus fruits that grow abundantly and without problems in western Georgia. Recently, many residents of the coastal zone have planted lemon trees solely for their beauty, because otherwise they would be too lazy to take care of them. One of the main reasons why local citrus production is slowing down and no one risks growing anything is due to unrealistic wages. Yes, precisely in wages, because no one wants to receive them in adequate amounts, and in our local market there has been a vicious tendency that a citizen of Georgia does not have to receive a living wage and the work of a peasant does not deserve adequate payment for the efforts expended.
Once on a social network I came across a remarkable advertisement: someone wrote that he would buy a large batch of pork for 7 lari per kilogram and was waiting for offers. A powerful stream of criticism fell on him: “What other 7 lari? On the market, pork costs at least 15!” However, there were several people who agreed to these enslaving conditions: “I urgently need money and I am ready to sell it at the specified price.” And they sold it. What I mean by all this is that, as sad as it may seem, in Georgia we have always been able to make money on the misfortune of others, and some are doing well even now. Remember how, during the pandemic, “enterprising” people made millions on protective masks, selling them for 2-3 lari for 5 tetri, and no one even blushed!
Unfortunately, this is our problem, and as you can see, it affects not only lemons. This summer, ice cream worth more than 4 million dollars was imported to Georgia. Türkiye again became the main supplier. And do you know what is of particular interest? If 15-20 years ago we associated Turkish products with low quality, now in almost all of Europe this country is emerging as a leading player in various fields. That is, the Turks did their best, learned well, worked smartly and achieved results. What are we doing in the meantime? We have forgotten how to do even what we knew how to do. Ice cream produced in Gurjaani or Senaki was previously very well known not only in Georgia but throughout the Soviet Union. And now? Ice cream is still produced here today, and although the taste is not the same, it is still not bad. There are still people alive who know how to make this delicious ice cream, but today nobody needs them. And why bother and bother if Türkiye is nearby? The ice cream we import from there sells well, we eat it with great pleasure and we contribute significantly to the development of… the Turkish economy. I mean that ice cream is not a heavy industry; its production does not require billions of dollars of investment or expensive equipment. It is not a production of complex car parts or engines, but a product consisting only of milk and sugar. But we cannot afford it either. Or rather, we destroy and destroy indifferently and mercilessly even what we knew how to do.
Lemons, ice cream and… vegetables. We are breaking records in these areas of import. If you think about it, your heart turns bitter and funny: we buy vegetables worth 15 million dollars abroad, and we do it in a country where previously two regions not only fully supplied the whole of Georgia with vegetables, but also successfully exported them to other allied republics. There was a time when Kvemo Kartli and Imereti easily solved this problem, but now we have become so lazy that we even prefer to buy vegetables in Turkey or Azerbaijan. You buy in one place, sell in another. Villagers are too lazy to take a handful of seeds and sow them in their village yards, so that they always have green vegetables at least for their own table. I remember when I was a child and came to the village, my grandfather urgently butchered a chicken, my grandmother carefully plucked it and at the same time baked the dough in the oven. And in her garden she grew wonderful cucumbers and tomatoes. She picked them straight from the garden, chopped fresh herbs, and laid out homemade cheese and pickled vegetables on the table. All of this seemed simple, but it looked very pretty and, most importantly, incredibly useful. And if you think about it, you’ll understand that it was truly a royal feast. The copious meals were always followed by fruit from our own garden, and everything tasted completely different and brought us great joy.
And now? Nowadays, tomatoes on people’s tables are riddled with hard white veins, green leaves are rough, cucumbers taste bitter, cheese is made from powdered milk powder, bread is soaked in palm oil, and chickens are raised on premixes… It’s as if you’re not sitting at your own table, but in a chemical laboratory, and you eat without noticing what you’re chewing, because the food has almost no taste. For dessert we also have fruits, but they were brought from the market, where they were sprayed with some kind of solution so that they wouldn’t lose their “commercial appearance.” However, we still eat them because there is no other option, or rather, there is no other product for sale. Grandmothers with headscarves, natural products, ripe fruits have disappeared from our table like last year’s snow, and we, at best, look pleadingly into the hands of our neighbors, hoping that maybe they will at least grow something natural, tasty and want to share with us…
We will soon reach a point where we will become too lazy to bake bread, and then we will also start importing all our baked goods from abroad (by the way, we already import some types of bread). Who is responsible for all these things? It is not difficult to blame someone, but no, gentlemen, we are only to blame, because we came to all this, as they say, with our own hands. It is clear that the state does not intend to take agriculture in a new direction. It considers this area of activity simply as “excessive expenses”. But who forbade us to grow herbs and vegetables in our backyard? And does no one allow us to plant trees ourselves, or have we completely forgotten how to do it?
I remember the wonderful Georgian film “Saplings”, where a 90-year-old man is looking for a wild pear and explains that it produces very juicy and sweet fruits, but it begins to bear fruit only after 15 years. The foreigners to whom he tells all this are clearly perplexed and laugh at him among themselves. So we, unlike this wise old man, do not want to look ahead, we live only one day, worrying only about how we can fill our stomach today, without thinking at all about what will happen tomorrow. In the field of agriculture, countries have surpassed us not only in the region, but, probably, all over the world. They realized that food is the main strategic product and that is what we should focus on now.
You can be sure that both the current government and the opposition know this well, but none of them said a word on the eve of the elections that agriculture must be supported and that it must be done differently, that it is important to produce basic products and essential foodstuffs in sufficient quantities, first of all, at home. By developing the agricultural sector, we will not only improve the economy, but also create additional jobs for the population and, most importantly, start consuming natural products again. Perhaps then we will finally abandon the alarming primacy we have in cancer and provide people with healthy nutrition, as it was during the “bad memory of the communists.” After all, then great importance was attached to the quality of food.
Levan Gabashvili“Georgia and the world”
