The cost of damage to agriculture in areas affected by Typhoon No.10 is rising. Especially a number of farm crops in Hokkaido prefecture have been heavily damaged.
As many as four typhoons made landfall in the prefecture or passed close to the region just in past two weeks since Typhoon No.7 attacked Hokkaido for the first time this year on August 17.
In some of the major producing areas of root vegetables and underground stem crops such as onions and potatoes, floodwaters inundated lots of farmlands. People of wholesalers in the Hokkaido prefecture are worrying that the market will soon go into great confusion.
At Ota Market of the Tokyo Metropolitan Wholesale Market, a price of carrot considerably soared on August 31.
Carrots produced in Hokkaido were priced 2052 yen per 10 kg package, 324 yen up over the previous day. The price has risen by almost 50 percent from the level of last summer. Some of the carrot producers were forced to stop their harvesting. Transportation of the crop was also delayed in some places.
The wholesale market people are afraid that stabilization of the market will not come back until this November.
Prices of the underground stem crops such as onions are not yet surging at the wholesale markets. “But farmers have not completed harvesting at some of the major onion producing areas battered by the Typhoon. The price will be souring next week,” a spokesman of the Ota Market said.