Government decides to cut potato crop

THE GOVERNMENT has decided to limit next year’s potato harvest to 100,000 tons to avoid another market collapse, which so far this year has cost the state £5 million in compensation to farmers, Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis said yesterday.

“If you plant too little, you may be safe, but then you get out of the market,” Rolandis told the Cyprus Mail. “In light of the problems this year, we decided that the happy medium would be best.”

“The idea is to have not more than 100,000 tons” of potatoes at harvest time. “That would be the optimum in our judgment,” he said.

Both the government and the Potato Marketing Board earlier this month agreed that overproduction lay at the root of this year’s slump in potato prices, with consequent losses to Cyprus farmers.

The government on September 6 said it would pay £5 million to potato growers in partial compensation for their losses.

Cyprus’ trademark “red soil” potato is the island’s chief agricultural export. Britain and Europe account for 50-60 per cent of export sales.

But competition from Italy, Spain, Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Britain — many of which had bumper crops — last year cut sales from a normal 3,000 tons per week to only 1,000 tons per week.

So where Cyprus tubers, because of their quality, once sold at between £240 to £290 per ton, the market glut caused prices for the Cyprus potato to plunge as low as £150 per ton this year.

Not just this, but a Syrian potato, also grown in red soil, further cut into Cyprus “red soil” sales.

The Cyprus potato is sold unwashed, with the red soil on it as proof it is the genuine Cyprus product. But some European stores — especially in Britain — were reported this year mixing the cheaper Syrian tuber with the more expensive Cyprus product, confusing customers, boosting store profits and short-changing Cyprus growers.

The government earlier this month said the sales prospects looked good for this winter’s potato crop. If correct, this would help erase some of the farmers’ earlier export losses.

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.