What does a kilogram of British raspberries fetch at the wholesale market this week? This page answers that question for the home-grown fruit and vegetables traded at the big wholesale markets of England and Wales, in pounds sterling, using the official figures Defra collects at those markets. One honest warning before the tables: these are wholesale prices, the prices the trade pays before any shop adds its costs and margin, so they sit well below the shelf price at a supermarket. Read them as the market’s own valuation of each crop, and as a grow or buy signal: the higher a crop sits here, the more money a home grower saves by picking it instead of buying it.
Wholesale prices per kilogram
Average wholesale price per kilogram in GBP. Where Defra reports several varieties of a crop, the figure is the average across those varieties and the row says so. The movement figure compares this report with the previous one, and the trend line sketches two years of reports. Use the chips to filter to the expensive rows and the current risers and fallers.
Sold by the head
A few crops are traded by the head rather than by weight at the wholesale markets: cauliflower, lettuce and sweetcorn. Their prices sit here, at the price for one head or cob.
How to read this page
These are wholesale prices, not shelf prices. They are the most usual prices charged by wholesalers at the markets in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and London. A supermarket shelf price adds transport, packing, waste and margin on top, so it is always higher. What the wholesale figure tells you is what the crop itself is worth in the market that week, with nothing added.
One figure per crop, averaged across varieties. Defra reports a price for each variety it tracks, but publishes no volumes, so there is nothing to weight the average by. Each row is the plain average of that crop’s variety prices in the latest report, and the row tells you how many varieties sit behind it. Two splits are worth knowing: broad beans are listed apart from green beans, and spring onions apart from bulb onions, because they are different crops in the garden and carry very different prices.
The table follows the British season. Only home-grown produce is reported, so crops appear when British growers are harvesting them and go quiet when they are not. A quiet row keeps its last price, labelled with the date it was last reported. Asparagus in October is a spring memory; the row returns when the new season’s spears reach the markets.
Imported produce never appears. Bananas, citrus, mangoes, avocados and anything else Britain does not grow commercially are outside this series entirely, because the markets only report home-grown lines. Potatoes are the one home-grown staple missing here: Defra covers them in a separate series, not this one.
Reports arrive fortnightly. Defra publishes a new edition every two weeks, and each price is the average for its week. An edition is occasionally skipped when too little market data comes in; when that happens the page simply keeps showing the last good tables until the next edition lands.
Grow it or buy it?
Wholesale prices make the grow or buy maths clearer, not weaker. The wholesale figure is the floor: the least the crop changes hands for anywhere in the chain. When raspberries fetch over £13 per kilogram at wholesale, or blueberries near £9, the punnet on the shelf costs far more again, and a few healthy canes or bushes repay their space many times over. At the other end, carrots, onions and cabbage trade cheaply even at wholesale because field growers produce them so efficiently; grow those for flavour and freshness, not for savings.
A practical rule from these numbers: if a crop you eat every week sits above about £3 per kilogram at wholesale and grows in your area, it belongs on your planting list. Check what suits your area with the Interactive Planting Zone Finder UK, then match the crop to your season.
Where the prices come from
Every figure on this page comes from the wholesale fruit and vegetable price series published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on GOV.UK. Defra collects the most usual prices charged by wholesalers for home-grown produce at the wholesale markets in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and London (New Spitalfields or Western International), and publishes the averages under the Open Government Licence. The series runs back to 2017, which is why the trend lines on this page can show two full years from the first day.
Every week our own collector checks for a new edition, reads Defra’s machine-readable time series, works each crop back to its standard form and redraws the two tables on our server. The tables are then embedded into this page as finished tables, so what you see is exactly what the latest report says. If a collection run ever fails, the page keeps showing the last good tables instead of going blank.
Questions
How often are these prices updated?
Defra publishes a new edition every two weeks, usually on a Monday, and the tables on this page are rebuilt from each new edition. The line above each table shows the week the prices belong to. An edition is occasionally skipped when too little market data is available; the page then keeps the previous tables until the next edition appears.
Are these supermarket prices?
No. These are wholesale market prices: what wholesalers charge for home-grown produce at the Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and London markets, before transport, packing and retail margin are added. The shelf price for the same crop is always higher. Use the page to see what each crop is worth in the market itself, how that value moves through the season, and which crops are worth garden space.
How is the price for a crop worked out?
Defra reports a weekly average price for each variety it tracks, such as Bramley and Cox apples, but publishes no traded volumes. Each row here is therefore the plain average of that crop’s variety prices in the latest report, and the row states how many varieties it is based on. Broad beans are averaged separately from green beans, and spring onions separately from bulb onions, because their prices differ too much for one figure to be honest.
Why is a crop missing, or showing an old date?
Because only home-grown produce is reported, and British crops are seasonal. A crop with no recent harvest has no market price: its row keeps the last reported price, labelled with its date, and returns when the season does. Crops Britain does not grow, such as bananas and avocados, never appear at all, and potatoes are covered by a separate Defra series rather than this one.
What does a wholesale price tell a home gardener?
It tells you the crop’s floor value: the least it sells for anywhere in the supply chain. If a crop is expensive even at wholesale, like raspberries, blueberries or green beans, it is dearer still by the time it reaches a shelf, so growing it saves the most money. If it is cheap at wholesale, like carrots and cabbage, commercial growers are hard to beat on price, and the garden case rests on flavour, freshness and variety instead.
