In the space of a year the areas planted with vegetables in the country have gone down by 55%, a Ministry of Agriculture report shows. The utilized arable land in Bulgaria covers over 5 million hectares, or 45% of the country’s entire territory, the report reads.

But only around 1% of the farming land is used for growing vegetables. In 2020, 52,000 hectares were cultivated for vegetable growing, which is a decline of 55% compared to 2019.

769,000 tons of vegetables were produced last year, a quarter of them – potatoes. Surprisingly, data show that 22% of the farmland for growing vegetables is planted with chickpeas and only 9% - with tomatoes.