Potato growers can’t take it anymore. They are on the brink of the abyss. They are having to sell below production costs and, at the same time, helplessly witness the rise in prices of seeds, fertilizers, fuel… The accounts don’t add up. That’s why the Committee in Defense of the Potato of the Country yesterday convened a concentration in Antonio Mederos Sosa square, in The lagoonin which he launched an SOS. Farmers ask for fair pricesthat the abuse of “unfair importation” and a “real commitment of supermarkets and hypermarkets for local products” be curbed.
Around 70 people gathered in a protest that included professionals from the sector, prominent actors from Tenerife’s agriculture and a broad political representation. «For the potato a fair price is not being paid; there is a very serious problem with large distribution, “said regional deputy Francisco Déniz, also a member of the Pope’s Table. The representative of Sí Podemos Canarias urged to avoid “unfair importation”, and indicated that producers cannot leave the land. “Prices have to be above the cost of production”, demanded invoking the Food Chain Law.
Déniz pointed out that farmers are even forced to deliver their product without a price having been set beforehand. “What the institutions have to facilitate is the stage and try to see how we can modify some laws, but it is complicated because the European Union prevents you from protecting your market, because we are in a free market society,” he acknowledged before the start of the act. “We are seeing how, legally, the European Union can approve a Canarian singularity for us,” he said.
The insular secretary of the Coordinator of Farmers and Ranchers Organizations (COAG) in Tenerife pointed out that two kilos of potatoes from Israel are charged for more than three euros in supermarkets, while those harvested by local farmers “do not They don’t want to pick them up for 30 cents.” The president of the Cooperativa del Campo La Candelaria, María Candelaria Rodríguez, and the mayor of La Laguna also intervened in a call in which a manifesto was read in which the field complained about the “misery prices” it receives . «We were being paid for a kilo of potatoes at 20 or 25 cents. An abuse that we have decided to confront. But not only that; when there is more potato production in the country, the unfair importation of potatoes from Israel and England sinks the market to the benefit of two or three importers and ruins our people,” the farmers said.
“The time has changed; we want to live in the countryside, like our ancestors. We want to continue producing food, but we do not want to live in poverty. That is why we demand the commitment of all social sectors so that we all get ahead, “cried the harvesters. “We appeal to the solidarity of you, of the companies and institutions to continue working the land with the knowledge that we inherited,” they stated.
popes of england
«The field cannot continue in the abandonment in which it is». The phrase is from a learned voice in environmental and agricultural matters, that of the former Environment Minister of the Cabildo de Tenerife and university professor Wladimiro Rodríguez Brito, who also joined the meeting this Thursday and lamented the fall that has occurred in recent years in the number of cultivated hectares. From the act, and despite the situation, he took the positive reading that it managed to bring together people from the sector, and among them young people and women.
“We have had an exceptional case: we have been eating potatoes from England, dug in September, until June. That had never happened in the history of the Canary Islands. Why? Because they are coming, I think in a dumping situation, cold-treated potatoes, with cold storage or with anti-germination,” he pointed out, and asked for solutions so that the land is not abandoned: “Someone will have to guarantee a minimum price. The Government of the Canary Islands, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Council of Tenerife… they will have to guarantee the farmers that next year they will buy their potatoes at least at cost price, and that there will be public money, if not otherwise, so that they do not go bankrupt”.
government against government
In the concentration stood out the high presence of representatives of parties in the government. Without going any further, one of the leaders of the act was the regional deputy Francisco Déniz (Podemos). Laguna councilors from United, advisers, mayors of Sí se puede in Tegueste and El Rosario joined in, and even the mayor of La Laguna passed by. Of 70 people, there were fifteen politicians or positions of trust. Don’t you think there may be those who don’t understand that those who govern ask for solutions? «We have been with CC for 40 years governing all the institutions and the ministries of agriculture, and they have us in the situation in which we are; we have just arrived, ”Déniz replied. «At least I am doing what I think I have to do; what some should have done 20 or 30 years ago. Now we have to fix all the broken dishes », he indicated, adding: « And it’s not easy ».
