Poor quality but cheap Chinese pepper endangers high-quality Hungarian products

The Hungarian pepper producers have only one chance to survive and beat the Chinese competitors: they must distinguish themselves on the market because they cannot go below the Chinese prices.

According to index.hu, that is what Zsolt Feldman, Hungary’s secretary of state responsible for agriculture and development, said on the 12th Hungarian Pepper Day in Hajós, Bács-Kiskun County. He added that producers should modify their product descriptions and the production rules to maintain high quality.

Feldman said Chinese pepper flooded the European markets thanks to their low prices. However, the Hungarian product is of higher quality, so it needs to be distinguished from its Far Eastern competitor.

Pepper growers should not have any illusion that the market environment they were accustomed to 20 years ago will ever return. Consumer trends have changed, and the era of mass production is over. Therefore, producers should focus on the protection of provenance, pepper procession, post-harvest investments, developments reducing weather risks and options for direct marketing.

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Protecting the Kalocsai and Szegedi pepper brands

Moreover, professionals will be able to create their own interest-protection organisations. Thus, they could protect the Kalocsai and Szegedi pepper brands. The government promised help for producers who modernise their processes and aim to continue to compete with high-quality green and red peppers.

Furthermore, the government will announce the relevant applications this autumn. It is understood that they may support different subprocesses like drying, milling and wrapping technologies. As a result, Hungarian-grown Szegedi or Kalocsai peppers will be easy to differentiate from their lower-quality Chinese competitors, and locals may buy more Hungarian products.