The scenes of Boyacá peasants selling each bundle of potatoes from a harvest that took them five months to produce for a mere 8,000 pesos (42,000 pesos less than before the pandemic) on the side of the road, have Colombians worried and outraged.
For different analysts, even in a scenario of economic crisis such as that generated by covid 19, it is inexplicable that areas such as Ventaquemada, dedicated for many generations to the cultivation and commercialization of potatoes, have gone to the extreme of throwing it away or letting it lose on the farms .
The drama is shared by at least 100,000 producers, who have no one to buy the 1.5 million tons of this crop from them.
What explains what happened? These are some causes:
1. Low consumption due to the pandemic. Nobody in Colombia, and that includes farmers in the field, was prepared for the confinements, productive paralysis, unemployment and the sharp drop in consumption that occurred due to the new coronavirus. In an interview with Yamid Amat in EL TIEMPO this Sunday, the Minister of Agriculture, Rodolfo Zea, explains it like this: “Because of this pandemic , hotels, restaurants, public entertainment venues and schools, which are large consumers of products, had to close. agricultural. In addition, the economic income of Colombians has decreased, causing a drop in the demand for farm products “.
2. Growing imports. For producers consulted by EL TIEMPO, it does not make sense that the country, which produces an average of more than 2,700,000 tons of the tuber per year, also imports it and in increasingly large quantities: while in 2009 8,981 tons of processed potatoes, 58,616 were imported in 2019, largely from Europe.
3. Competitive disadvantages. The sector lacks investment, development and technical assistance and training for growers that other producing countries do, even in the region. That prevents, for example, that the country cannot export fresh potatoes, since it does not comply with phytosanitary requirements and has a high presence of pests and fungi, César Pachón, representative to the Chamber for Boyacá, told EL TIEMPO.
4. Lack of planning and organization of plantings. This leaves the sector unarmed before situations such as the pandemic. According to the Minister of Agriculture, changing the mindset and focusing on “ordering production, planting only what has a market, planning the areas that are needed and avoiding speculation, will take years.”
5. Overproduction of this food. This is a clear consequence of the lack of planning and organization.
To alleviate the situation, the Ministry of Agriculture provided 30,000 million pesos to finance the Support Program for the Marketing of Fresh Potato, which consists of paying direct economic compensation to small producers of the tuber, affected by the low prices caused by the oversupply caused during the covid-19 pandemic.
“A small potato producer who sells 10 tons may receive up to $ 1,240,000 in marketing subsidies,” explained Minister Rodolfo Zea.
Colombian potato growers also hope that in the coming days the Ministry of Commerce will extend, for two more years, the ad valorem antidumping tariff applied to imports of precooked potatoes from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands and, furthermore, that the raise the tariff from the current 8 percent to 30 percent, for effective protection.
This partially slowed the entry of potatoes from those countries, but imports continued to grow. And they consider that the control of imports is also decisive to avoid the fall in tuber prices.
