They anticipate that it will happen to them once they conclude the legal process for the opening of fresh potatoes from that country
Potato producers in the country anticipate unfair competition with their counterparts in the United States, once they conclude the legal process for the opening of fresh potatoes from that country.
This is due to the high surpluses that the latter have, despite the fact that their production is already 10 times higher than that of Mexico, warned Gerardo García Menaut, president of the National Confederation of Potato Producers (Conpapa). But also because US farmers will be able to sell their product directly from the field to supermarkets, thus breaking the marketing chain that currently operates in Mexico.
“Everything that is self-services they will be able to sell directly (…) and this will strongly affect all marketers, but we also do not want producers or marketers to have unfair competition,” he said.
The high possibility of this new blow adds to the strong risk of contagion of pests that this imported food represents not only for the potato produced in the country, but for other crops, such as tomato, chili, sugar cane, tobacco and even corn.
“Because this would be much more serious; we are going to have to take care of the issue of potato prices (from the US) and I almost guarantee that we are going to have to enter the controversy panels with the issue of dumping, because we have. seen recurrently in other actions (agricultural cases) “.
On April 28, the Supreme Court endorsed rules from the past six years to allow the importation of fresh potatoes from the United States and other countries to all of Mexico, which has been suspended since 2014 due to protection from national producers.
