Azernews.Az

Qabil Ashirov

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Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable export sector is undergoing a change that deserves more attention than the headline figures alone might suggest. The country is still heavily dependent on a limited number of foreign markets, but the direction of travel is becoming clearer: Azerbaijan’s agricultural exports are gradually becoming more diversified.

This is particularly visible in the tomato sector.

Fruit and vegetable exports have long been one of the most important components of Azerbaijan’s non-oil economy. In 2024, they accounted for more than 21% of non-oil exports, while in 2025 their share of Azerbaijan’s main non-oil exports rose to 25%. In the first half of 2026, Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable exports increased by 18.9% year-on-year. However, despite this strong growth, their share of the country’s total non-oil and gas exports fell to around 10%.

This decline in share does not mean that Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable exports have contracted. Rather, it reflects the extraordinary surge in gold exports, which rose to more than $3.6 billion and significantly increased the overall volume of non-oil exports. As a result, fruit and vegetables now account for a smaller percentage of a much larger non-oil export basket, even though the sector itself continues to grow.

Azerbaijan exported gold worth approximately $3.64 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with $326.2 million a year earlier. Gold exports increased roughly 30-fold in value and 13.6-fold in volume.

This raises an important question. Is this a new, permanent pillar of Azerbaijan’s export structure, or is it partly the result of an exceptional transaction and unusually favorable circumstances? It is too early to know. Gold has suddenly moved from being a relatively modest non-oil export item to one of the country's largest export categories. Whether this scale can be sustained in the coming years remains uncertain.

That uncertainty makes agricultural exports even more important.

Unlike a large one-off shipment of a high-value commodity, fruit and vegetable production is deeply connected to employment, regional economies, logistics, packaging, transportation, greenhouse farming and thousands of smaller businesses and households. It creates economic activity across a much broader part of society.

This is why export diversification should not simply mean finding another commodity to sell abroad. It should also mean creating more markets for the products Azerbaijan already produces.

For years, tomatoes demonstrated the risks of failing to do so. Russia was overwhelmingly Azerbaijan’s main tomato export market. In some years, roughly 98–99% of Azerbaijan’s tomato exports went to Russia. The concentration was so high that, for practical purposes, Azerbaijan’s tomato export industry was almost entirely dependent on one market.

That created a vulnerability for producers in important agricultural regions such as Shamkir, Khachmaz and other areas where greenhouse and open-field vegetable production plays a significant role. Any disruption in the Russian market — whether caused by regulation, logistics, political tensions, border restrictions or changes in consumer demand — could immediately affect Azerbaijani producers.

The encouraging development is that this concentration is beginning to decline.

In the first six months of 2026, Azerbaijan exported 135,641 tons of tomatoes worth $163.85 million. Russia still accounted for about 93.8% of the physical volume, meaning that dependence remains extremely high. But the remaining 6.2% is important because it represents a gradual expansion beyond the traditional Russian market.

Belarus accounted for about 1.8% of the volume, Georgia 2.8%, Ukraine 0.9% and Poland 0.5%. Bulgaria also appeared as a new destination, although its initial shipment was tiny. Together, these markets are still nowhere near large enough to challenge Russia's dominance. But diversification does not happen overnight.

The important point is that the trend has started.

Azerbaijan should not necessarily aim to replace Russia as its tomato market. That would be neither realistic nor economically necessary. The objective should instead be to ensure that no single market has the power to determine the fate of the entire sector.

If Russia accounts for 90% of exports today, reducing that share to 80%, then 70%, would already represent meaningful progress. Markets in the European Union, the wider region and the Middle East could gradually become additional destinations as Azerbaijani producers improve quality, packaging, cold-chain infrastructure, certification and supply reliability.

This is what genuine export diversification should look like: not abandoning successful markets, but reducing excessive dependence on them.

Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable sector is not yet diversified in the way the country would ideally want. Russia remains overwhelmingly dominant in tomatoes, while agricultural exports still face structural challenges.

But the direction matters.

The emergence of new destinations alongside continued growth in fruit and vegetable exports suggests that Azerbaijan is beginning to move from a model based primarily on one dominant market toward a broader export network.

That process may be slow. It may take years. But for Azerbaijani agriculture, especially for regions whose economies depend heavily on agricultural production, it may ultimately be more important than any single annual export record.