Anyone in southern Finland hoping to store some berries for later consumption is advised to buy their stock of strawberries now.
“We'll get to pick some more strawberries next week, but much of the crop will be picked this week”, says the operational manager Hannu Salo from union of berry farmers.
Strawberries will mature fast elsewhere in Finland, unless temperatures drop suddenly. According to Salo, this kind of fast maturing hasn’t happened in years. The downside with the situation is that the berry itself tends to remain quite small.
“We were expecting around twelve to fourteen million kilos of harvest, but now, due to the heatwave, it’s likely to be less than ten million kilos,” says Salo.
For consumers this is good news. The price of strawberries will drop as there’s a great amount of berries available. Already, some places are selling strawberries at considerably lower prices than during high season last year.