Potato prices at levels of 20 years ago

Potatoes are one of the essential foods in the diet of Colombian families. The popular combination ACPM (Rice, meat, potato and ripe) “fading“Hunger when the pocket tightens. With an average of 90 kilos per year per head, in 2019 the producer received $ 900 pesos per kilo in wholesale potato distributors in the center of the country. But in 2020 the situation is different: prices do not exceed $ 300 pesos in the reception shops, so hundreds of peasants take to the highways to sell their product to tourists and drivers who travel through Boyacá and Cundinamarca.

The crisis in the sector, according to Fedepapa, a union that brings together producers, has 3 elements, two of which are a product of the situation, that both the government and the peasants must work in the remainder of 2020 to overcome the anguish of low prices and the imbalance that it generates in the productive chain of the sector, 80% made up of families.

The first is related to drop in demand caused by COVID-19 that forced citizens to restrict the consumption of food from the countryside. An added factor was the closure of bars, restaurants, hotels and catering services, which for the union represent 30% of the fixed consumption of potatoes.

Tied to it, Climate change played a trick on growers who suffered a prolonged summer at unexpected times for their crops. According to Germán Palacio, manager of Fedepapa: “The harvest was surrounded by a climatic phenomenon. But that does not have to do with the frosts that were at the beginning of 2020, but in March, April and May was expected to be like the traditional winter, but instead it was an intense summer, the sowings ran, then the harvests moved to October and November”, Stated in the Republic as one of the reasons the market seems “flooded” for the potato.

The union argues that there is no oversupply but rather a rise in production by an estimated one ton compared to 2019: 2.6 million tons are ready to be consumed, but the health crisis changed the food landscape in Colombia

The third is related to the intermediation that takes advantage of the surplus and raises it in price to maintain market share. Fedepapa emphasizes that by putting potatoes on the shelves of supermarkets, what the citizen pays has little to do with what the producer receives at the distributors. This shortage promoted by intermediaries affects the price of potatoes, since they play with potatoes from other countries, especially precooked ones that come from Europe or North America, at a cheaper price than the national one.

Catalina Mora, manager of Distribuidora Papera de Boyacá, explains the phenomenon of falling prices as an issue that concerns supermarkets and stores, and not so much intermediaries: “The accumulated inventories of potatoes relied on the consumption of people at home, but this year we have seen how supermarkets and neighborhood stores, the consumer loses a lot because they put a price much higher than what they should pay. That then discourages the purchase ”.

The minister of agriculture, Rodolfo Zea, has promised aid to regulate the price to small producers while the sector goes through the contingency of COVID_19. Zea stated in official statements that “The incentive for potato marketing is by $ 30,000 million pesos and will reach more than 25,000 producers. With this they will move close to 200,000 tons”.

Despite the government announcement to create incentives for the acquisition and placing on the market at an affordable price, the initiative of small producers to go out of work in the second week of November is firm.

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