Black truffle prices and volumes in Spain and France season 2018-19

Last truffle season is Spain was pretty good in volumes, growers enjoyed although prices drop quite a bit from last year. So growers with irrigation harvested similar quantities but sold their product a much less price. If Spain harvested last year around 40Tons, this year total production should be around 80Tons. Mainly due to good summer rains, that made orchards without irrigation and wild truffieres to fruit.

First truffles in the season had quite a low quality (so prices) due to an excess of rain in the fall that promoted truffles to rot. In fact so many fields where muddy in mid november, so hunters could not even get into the orchards…Moreover, highly productive orchards with irrigation, so with good yields year after year are helping our main pest, the beatle Leiodes to expand, this combined with a mild winter made beatle damage to increase.

See the three figures comparing the last 3 seasons in the Estación de Mora de Rubielos (Teruel) whole sale truffle market (means dirty truffle, all qualities mixed, not graded yet), the largest one in Spain.

I would like to thank the Asociación de Truficultores de Teruel to allow me to use this data.

Blue line: whole sale minimum price

Red line: whole sale maximum price  

Green line: : retail average price 

In the following figure, prices paid in Spain for black truffle from 1955 until 2014:

See in the following figures comparing prices and volumes in different french and spanish markets for 2 different weeks in February and March 2019. Where it says “al detalle” means retail:

If you want to check data from other markets, here some links:

• Carpentras (France): http://www.carpentras.fr/pratique/foires-et-marches/marche-aux-truffes-dhiver.html
• Richerenches y Uzès (France): https://www.rnm.franceagrimer.fr/prix
• Vic (Barcelona, Spain): http://www.llotjadevic.org/es/noticies/16/trufa (under payment)

For the volumes shown in these links, looks like french production has been low again…

Let´s see how season goes down under. Good luck!

Cheers,

Marcos S. Morcillo