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Harvest season for Kahramanmaraş pepper: Price hits 30 lira per kilo
🇹🇷 Turkey /Economy & Trade

Harvest season for Kahramanmaraş pepper: Price hits 30 lira per kilo

From Cumhuriyet · () Turkish

Translated from Turkish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Sources not specified Context piece
  • The harvest of Kahramanmaraş's special paste-making kapya peppers has commenced, with prices fluctuating between 25 and 30 lira per kilogram.
  • Producers emphasize the superior quality and flavor of the locally grown peppers, attributing it to the region's soil and climate.
  • Despite challenges like delayed harvests due to rain and high input costs, farmers aim to provide high-quality, reasonably priced products to consumers.

The fertile plains of Kahramanmaraş are alive with activity as the harvest season for its prized paste-making kapya peppers gets underway. Farmers are diligently collecting the ripe peppers from the fields, preparing them for sale and processing.

The pepper is currently finding buyers between 25 and 30 lira. Harvest is being done on a 150-decare land.

— Mehmet ÇetinkayaChairman of the Kahramanmaraş Chamber of Agriculture, discussing the current market price and harvest scale.

These peppers are highly valued for their meaty texture, intense aroma, and distinctive flavor, making them a staple in Kahramanmaraş cuisine, particularly for producing the region's famous pepper paste. Producers credit the local soil and climate conditions for contributing to the pepper's exceptional quality.

Our products are high quality and fresh. They need to be collected and sold daily. They are not like peppers that have been on the road for two days.

— Hacı Aziz NohutluA producer from Dulkadiroğlu district, highlighting the freshness and quality of the local peppers.

This year's harvest faced some delays due to rainfall, and producers are grappling with increased input costs. Despite these challenges, farmers are committed to delivering a high-quality product. Prices currently range from 25 to 30 lira per kilogram.

Our input costs are high, and we expect the people of Maraş to prefer our products. Our prices are currently moving in the 25, 28, and 30 lira range.

— Orhan AkkurtA producer discussing production costs and current market prices.

Producers are urging consumers to choose local Kahramanmaraş peppers over those imported from other regions, citing superior quality and better yield for paste production. They note that local peppers yield about one kilogram of paste from six kilograms of peppers, compared to ten kilograms for some other varieties. Farmers hope for a productive season that ensures profitability.

They try to buy products from outside because they are cheap, but the quality of those products is low. Also, they don't yield one kilogram of paste from 6 kilograms of peppers like our peppers do. They yield one kilogram of paste from 10 kilograms.

— Meryem NohutluA producer explaining the quality difference and yield compared to external products.
About this summary

Originally published by Cumhuriyet in Turkish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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