SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, December 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The spokesman for Agriculture of the Sí Podemos Canarias Parliamentary Group, Francisco Déniz, has advocated for the protection of the country’s potato against “unfair and hypocritical” competition from the importation of potatoes in a sensitive period, when local production has the market supplied .
This has been stated after meeting with farmers from the north of Tenerife, members of the COAG and councilors of Sí Se Podemos and of the Assembly for La Orotava with the intention of addressing initiatives to protect and promote the country’s potato production.
At the meeting, convened at the request of the deputy, the attendees made it clear that this year “it is not going to accept in any way that a kilo of potatoes be paid below the cost of production, about 65 cents, in line with the Law of Food chain”.
“The reality is that the very low prices that have been paid to those who grow potatoes have caused many families to rethink abandoning the crops, and that would be the worst scenario. This situation alerts not only to the loss of cultivated hectares, but also to problems in the supply “, has affirmed Déniz, who added that it is not due to accept less than the cost of production for the farmers. “The payment must be far above,” he added.
At the meeting held in La Orotava, the consequences of the Food Chain Law for the country’s potato, the commercialization of the product, “and the disloyalty of the importation of potatoes in a sensitive period, when there is potato in the country, were analyzed.”
Francisco Déniz recalled that the current Law prohibits selling at a loss and below the cost of production, and pointed out that several farmers present at the meeting denounced that, in some cases, cooperatives and intermediaries paid them at 17 cents and below 25, hence “the tremendous anger and controversy raised before last summer.”
“That is the ruin and poverty of some regions of the north of Tenerife and the Canary Islands, while simultaneously it is the case that some managers at the head of cooperatives are the main importers. It simply cannot be,” insisted Déniz
On the other hand, it was stressed that the country’s potato should be marketed in large supermarkets, which is where 60 percent of the Canarian population buys. “The country’s potato must be in these large supermarkets at reasonable prices for farmers and not only as an advertising claim at the price of slavery,” the deputy reiterated.
For this reason, members of the COAG present at the meeting proposed that a call be made for the establishment of agreements and agreements of these large chains with independent or grouped farmers, with clear commitments to planning, prices and production volume.
Finally, Déniz advanced that in the coming months more meetings will be called and campaigns will be promoted “hoping that what happened this past year in the north of Tenerife does not happen.”
