Emergency meeting to discuss potato crisis

THE CYPRUS Potato Marketing Board will hold “an emergency meeting” on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the deluge of potatoes on the world market that are cutting deeply into sales of Cyprus potatoes, Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis said yesterday.

“We are having a problem selling potatoes in the UK and on the continent, which are 50 to 60 per cent of the Cyprus market,” Rolandis said.

“There is very tough competition” from such countries as Syria, Spain and Egypt, all of whom sell a potato grown in red earth, making them similar in appearance to the “red earth” potatoes which are a Cyprus trademark crop, he said.

An abundance of the tubers, plus an earlier crop in Europe than expected upended hopes of Cyprus potato growers for bumper crop returns on sales this year, he said.

Potatoes are Cyprus’ largest single crop, responsible for generating between £30 million and £40 million in sales yearly, he said.

Reports from Britain this year have suggested that some stores, both large and small, are buying up the cheaper non-Cyprus potatoes because they are grown in red earth, mixing them in with genuine “red earth” Cyprus potatoes, and advertising the mixture as exclusively the Cyprus “red earth” item.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.