The Losses in potato crops in the north of Tenerife due to drought and pests are around 60%as warned by the Association of Farmers and Ranchers of the Canary Islandsand that decrease is generating an unprecedented increase in prices. Farmers and intermediaries specialized in the sale of these tubers in the Valley of La Orotava have confirmed to EL DÍA that “potatoes are more expensive than ever”. The price per kilo paid to farmers on farms has experienced very bad times in which It was set at just 30 or 40 cents, which meant a sale practically at a loss. For the intermediaries consultedfrom about 60 cents the price enters “within reason”but currently, and given the scarcity of available potatoes, the kilo is being paid at more than 1 euro in the field and, sometimes, up to 1.20 eurosdouble that in a conventional year and four times what has been paid in the worst moments.
Thomas Alonso Leon It has about 5 cultivated hectares in Icod el Alto, in Los Realejos, with white face potatoes, a highly demanded consumer variety. He hopes to harvest them in the next few days, although the forecasts are not rosy. «This year we have had to dance with the ugliest. The drought and days of intense heat in the months of March and April, which are key dates for potatoes, have generated crop losses that can reach 80%. The high temperatures melted the plants and those who do not have access to irrigation, which are the vast majority in the North, have seen that the harvest is complicated and the potato moth has taken advantage of this heat to reproduce and cause a lot of damage“, the Mint.
Alonso León acknowledges that the farmer who has been able to irrigate his potatoes in the worst days of March and April “is going to have a very good harvest and will be able to sell it at prices that are not remembered here, between 1 euro and 1.20 euros per kilo. Whoever has a good year should write it down, because it’s hard for something like this to happen again. Some are going to make money.”
A minority of farm workers, those who have had access to irrigation, “will earn a lot”
The benefit will reach very few, for the majority of potato farmers in the Valley of La Orotava “it will not be an easy year”. Tomás Alonso stresses that “the farmer’s life is never easy” and states that “in order for you to like this, you have to like even the problems. I have been in this for more than 20 years and I would not dedicate myself to anything else. In the end, we will try to save the furniture, now the subsidies from last year arrive and, with that, we will soften the blow.
Ivan Cabrera Doniz He is an intermediary, a merchant who works closely with the farmers, from whom he buys their potatoes on their own farms and then distributes them. He acknowledges that we are facing a very difficult year that has already started badly «the great rise in prices that affects fertilizers, fertilizers, phytosanitary products and fuels». The collateral damage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have increased the production costs of potatoes in the Tenerife countryside, and reduced harvest raises prices even more. There are far fewer potatoes on the market because that increase in costs has already reduced the amount that was planted compared to the previous year. Then came the drought and heat in the months of March and April, and the subsequent increase in pests. A devilish cocktail that, in the case of Dóniz, has meant that at this point he has been able to move barely 300,000 kilos of potatoes, “when I have sold more than a million kilos.”
Potatoes from abroad are arriving months earlier than usual, due to a shortage of local production
The rains came late and the dryland potato crop in the midlands, where irrigation networks are very scarce, has noticed it. The amount of potatoes available has been drastically reduced, driving prices to all-time highs. Iván Cabrera Dóniz, who has been in the business for 43 years, is clear that potatoes are today in the north of Tenerife “more expensive than ever in history”. The scarcity and its high price are anticipating the arrival of potatoes from abroad: “The normal thing is that they begin to bring in when there is no local production left, around September or October. At the earliest in August. However, This year the Pope is already entering from abroad, from Egypt, in the middle of June. And that is very unusual.”
