Georgia’s Fresh Herb Exports Earn More as Output Stays Flat

Georgia, the South Caucasus nation, earned $4.5 million exporting 1,900 tonnes of fresh herbs in the first half of 2026. Almost every added dollar came from price rather than tonnage. Export value climbed 3% from the same period last year, the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture reported, even as the volume shipped abroad barely moved.

A kilogram of Georgian fresh herbs fetched $2.12 abroad across all of 2025. By the first half of 2026, that had risen to $2.38, a gain of roughly 12%. Farmers, meanwhile, kept output inside the same narrow band they have held for years.

Herb Shipments Bring In More Money on the Same Tonnage

Herb production in Georgia has held inside a 7,000 to 8,500 tonne range for years, the ministry’s figures show, with only minor swings from one season to the next. Nothing in the first half of 2026 broke that pattern.

What changed was the price buyers were willing to pay. Georgian exporters converted the same size harvest into a steadily larger paycheck, and that shift did not start this year.

Four Countries Still Buy Almost All of It

Georgia’s fresh herbs move almost entirely into four destinations. Ukraine, Russia, Moldova and Romania remain the main buyers, the ministry said, alongside a handful of smaller markets that account for the rest.

That list has not shifted much over the years, and it mirrors a wider pattern across Georgian agriculture. A review of the country’s trade by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, the UN’s development agency) found that Georgia keeps returning to the same handful of export markets year after year, calling it a dependency risk for producers if any single buyer pulls back.

Georgia’s total exports have still grown enormously in absolute terms, from $600 million to $3 billion over the past two decades, according to that same review, with export earnings per person now running around $800 a year. The size of the pie has grown. Who gets to sell into it has not changed nearly as much.

Georgia’s overall farm trade shows the same shape on a bigger scale. In the first quarter of 2026, Russia alone bought $131.9 million of Georgian farm goods, more than the European Union and Azerbaijan combined, even though Georgian agricultural products reached 88 countries that quarter. Nuts, soft drinks, fish meal, bay leaves, mineral water and sheep posted some of the biggest gains.

Why Can’t Georgia Just Grow More Herbs?

Georgia’s herb producers have not expanded output because the barriers sit in processing and market access, not in available land. Cold storage, certification and price competition from Iran and Uzbekistan keep growers locked into the same buyers and the same volumes, even as demand and prices climb on the other side of the border.

Four constraints show up again and again in reporting on the sector:

• Certification gap – Georgian herb producers largely lack GlobalGAP farm certification and HACCP processing certification, the paperwork EU buyers require before they will consider a shipment.
• Price competition – Iranian and Uzbek suppliers routinely undercut Georgian herbs on price in Russia, the category’s largest single market.
• Dated handling – cultivation, packaging and cooling methods have stayed largely traditional, limiting how much of a harvest survives the trip to distant buyers in sellable condition.
• A narrow buyer base – with exports concentrated in four neighboring countries, there is little room to absorb a bigger harvest even if one were grown.

Those four constraints are not new. EastFruit’s monitoring of the sector first flagged the certification gap during a 2021 price surge, and the same limits are still shaping the numbers five years later. FAO analysts at the time also noted that Georgia tends to grow its two cheapest herb varieties and sell them into whichever market pays the least for them, a habit that caps how much value the sector adds at each step.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, the UN’s food and farming agency) has been trying to close part of that gap from the other end. The agency recently ran a skills program teaching Georgian students climate-smart farming methods, training that could eventually shape how the country’s next generation of growers plants, harvests and packs.

A 2021 Price Spike Set a Pattern That Never Reversed

Georgian herb prices last made headlines in early 2021, when a regional supply crunch sent wholesale prices soaring. Dill tripled, from $0.68 per kilogram in 2020 to $2.13 in early 2021. Cilantro rose 50%, from $1.00 to $1.52 per kilogram, according to EastFruit’s weekly price monitoring at the time.

Russia’s own herb production had risen 17.6% in 2020, yet its herb imports fell 47% that same year, mostly on logistics problems. That mismatch is part of what set off the price spike across neighboring markets, Georgia included.

…has proven to be one of the most successful for Georgia’s herbs producers.

That was Katerina Poberezhnaya, an FAO consultant, describing the 2020-2021 harvest. The expectation at the time was that the rally would fade once Russian and Uzbek production recovered and logistics normalized. EastFruit’s own reporting predicted farmers would expand plantings the following season to chase the higher prices.

Five years on, the ministry still describes Georgian herb production as stable within the same 7,000 to 8,500 tonne range. The expansion never really arrived. The higher prices did.

The Bay Leaf Contrast

Fresh herbs are not the only Georgian export riding higher prices this year. Bay leaves are doing the same thing, and adding volume on top of it.

Georgia shipped 4,200 tonnes of bay leaves worth $17.3 million in the same six months, nearly four times what fresh herbs earned in that period, according to the country’s bay leaf trade figures for the period.

Unlike herbs, bay leaf volume actually grew: up 27% year on year, or 896 tonnes, while export value rose 23%, or $3.3 million. The average price climbed too, to $4.10 per kilogram, roughly 72% more than fresh herbs fetch.

China absorbed 73% of that bay leaf total, with Russia taking another 15%. Bay leaves grew because China opened a new, large channel for them. Fresh herbs stayed flat because no comparable new buyer has emerged for cilantro, parsley and dill.

The two categories sit on the same ministry spreadsheet, grown a few valleys apart and shipped out of the same ports. One found new demand. The other is still selling to the same four neighbors it always has, just at a better price.

Georgian Wine Shows the Same Dependence on One Buyer

The market concentration behind Georgia’s herb numbers is not unique to herbs. Georgian wine faces an even sharper version of the same problem.

Russia buys 60 percent of Georgia’s wine exports, a Forbes review of the industry found. New Russian excise taxes are now squeezing producers who built their businesses around that single market, pushing some toward the United States and other Western buyers instead.

At Khareba Winery in Kakheti, Russian sales dropped from about 25% of the business before the war in Ukraine to roughly 1% today, largely because Russian sanctions made dollar payments for wine unworkable. Teliani Valley, another major producer, still sends about 40% of its wine to Russia and has not made the same shift.

Herbs, wine and Georgia’s wider farm trade all show the same shape: a handful of familiar buyers absorbing most of the volume, with new markets opening slowly, if at all. The Asian Development Bank (ADB, a Manila-based multilateral lender) expects Georgia’s overall economic growth to ease from 7.5% in 2025 to 5.5% in 2026 as external demand softens.

“Georgia’s economy has remained resilient to global shocks, with growth reaching a robust 7.5% in 2025,” said Lesley Bearman Lahm, the ADB’s country director for Georgia.

That $4.5 million herb total, like Georgia’s wine and blueberry earnings, still rests on the same four or five buyers the country has relied on for years.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Herbs Make Up Most of Georgia’s Fresh Herb Exports?

Coriander (known locally as kinzi), parsley and dill make up the traditional core of what Georgia ships abroad, a mix that has stayed largely the same for years. Tarragon and blue fenugreek show up constantly in Georgian cooking but play a far smaller role in the export figures than in the domestic kitchen.

When Is Georgia’s Herb Growing Season?

Much of the country’s herb output is concentrated in the Imereti region, where greenhouse cultivation runs from November through April and open-garden sowing begins in February. That cycle sets the rhythm for when fresh product is available to ship.

How Much of Georgia’s Herb Crop Actually Leaves the Country?

Georgia has typically exported somewhere between half and three-fifths of the fresh herbs its farms produce in a given year, based on past sector monitoring, with the remainder sold domestically. That ratio is one reason a stable harvest still translates into a fairly steady export volume.

Why Do Bay Leaves Sell for So Much More Than Fresh Herbs?

Bay leaves are dried before they leave Georgia, so they keep for months and travel without refrigeration. Fresh herbs spoil quickly and need faster, costlier handling, which helps explain why the two categories move through such different price brackets and different buyer bases.

Is Georgia’s Farm Sector Expected to Grow in 2026?

The Asian Development Bank expects Georgian agriculture to stabilize in 2026 and return to 1.7% growth in 2027, following a 6.1% contraction in 2025. Improvements in irrigation and productivity are cited as the main support behind that expected recovery.