Potato farmers in a páramo near the city of Mérida (Venezuela), in October 2022. Proinpa Merida-venezuela (RR.SS.)
A video of Colombian senator César Pachón spread through the Andean towns of Venezuela like a kick in the stomach of farmers.
It was September 26.
President Gustavo Petro had just sealed the opening of the binational border with the Venezuelan authorities with a truck crossing and a handshake, when the senator of the Historical Pact wanted to make his own gesture to enter history.
Some men with sacks of potatoes on their shoulders crossed the bridges towards Venezuela accompanied by Pachón, who interviewed them.
"We have food to give to Venezuelans," said one of them.
And the senator accompanied the message on his social networks with the hashtag #CorazónDePapa.
It is not yet a month since the opening of the border and concerns have not dissipated in the battered Venezuelan agricultural sector.
Potato producers have been dealing with an unusual entry of contraband Colombian potatoes into Venezuela for almost a year, which has led to the ruin of several families in the states of Táchira, Mérida and Trujillo, which in numbers are 40,000 jobs lost.
Hence, Senator Pachón's video has been responded to with an intense campaign on social networks with the message "Venezuela does not need a Colombian potato."
The National Confederation of Potato Producers and Traders in Venezuela (Confepapa) presented its quarterly balance of the sector a few days ago: the planting area fell by 22% and with it the self-sufficiency of the market fell by 33% since last year.
“Since November 2021, potato imports from Colombia to Venezuela went from approximately 6,600 tons, equivalent to 20% of sales in the national market, to represent 53% with approximately 19,000 tons of potatoes.
In the same period, the national potato went from representing 80% of the sale with approximately 26,400 tons to represent 47%, with about 17,000 tons," they point out in a statement.
The flooding of the Venezuelan market for neighboring potatoes has knocked down prices and led to crop losses for Venezuelan growers.
“The potato is culture.
In 1527 in the town of Cubiro, in Venezuela, there is the first record of when the Spaniards ate potatoes”, defends Edison Arciniegas, president of Confepapa.
In his opinion, Colombia's own economic dynamics, with access to credit, some incentives for production, access to technical assistance and supplies, mean that in that country not only the cultivated area is greater, but also the yield per hectare, which leads to surpluses that are being taken to the Venezuelan market, and also to Panama and Ecuador, to prevent the excess supply in Colombia from lowering prices for farmers in that country.
Arciniegas directly calls it unfair competition or
dumping
, as the artificial lowering of goods is known in international trade.
The import of potatoes to the oil country has incentives linked to smuggling, which was strengthened in the years of the closure of the 2,300 kilometers of border that Colombia and Venezuela share.
Freight and logistics prices seem to have no impact on potatoes that leave Norte de Santander or Boyacá and travel more than a thousand kilometers to reach the main markets in Venezuela.
The same day that Pachón crossed the bridge with the Colombian farmers, a bag of single-variety potatoes was sold at the Central de Abastos de Bucaramanga for $13.50 and the same bag, on the other side of the border, was sold in Maracaibo. at 10 dollars, in Barquisimeto at 10.50 dollars and in Caracas at 11 dollars.
This occurs even when Colombian producers feel the blow of inflation that has increased the production cost of this tuber in that country by 53%, according to figures from the FAO, and claim to have won a fight with European companies a few days ago by get the Colombian government to extend antidumping duties for five years and increase tariffs on these foreign companies, according to a statement released on October 11 by Fedepapa, the Colombian federation that groups producers.
But when Venezuelans go to the supermarket they do not differentiate where the potato comes from and most of what is offered today is from Colombia and is cheaper.
Those produced in the Venezuelan fields are rotting, along with cabbages, carrots and other vegetables.
This phenomenon occurs in Venezuela in the midst of the provisions created by the Anti-Blockade Law, approved by Chavismo to supposedly defend the economy from international sanctions.
The effect has been the opposite in this case.
The opacity, the liberalization of tariffs, the relaxation of phytosanitary permits and customs controls have provided an opportunity for smuggling in general, including potatoes.
The farm union has denounced that under the control of the so-called "protectorates", those parastatal figures created by the Government of Nicolás Maduro to control territories that at some point were governed by the opposition, these goods circulate throughout the country.
These "protectors"
“This surplus potato from Colombia, which in other conditions would have to be thrown away, can be sold at any price and it is a profit.
Collaterally, it allows them to conquer a market like the Venezuelan one, one of the most important in vegetable consumption," explains Arciniegas.
The border opening uses record figures such as those of 2008 as a flag, in which the commercial exchange between the two countries reached 7,200 million dollars to fall to just 222 million last year.
But for the president of Confepapa, the Venezuelan agricultural sector is seriously disadvantaged for that economic takeoff that the new government in Colombia has promised with the reestablishment of relations with the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro.
Potatoes in, youngsters out
Arciniegas says that 40 years ago the modernization of the countryside stopped the migration from the páramo to the cities in search of employment.
Today that process is being reversed.
At the end of September, when the border was about to open, in Pueblo Llano, the main potato-producing municipality in the country, there was a bitter farewell.
About 30 farmers left Mérida for the Darién jungle to try to reach the United States and the entire town gathered to say goodbye.
Every week young people leave, forced to emigrate due to the lack of opportunities in the field jobs, which are passed between generations, and also attracted by the nebulae of the so-called "American dream".
In these towns, the concern with the recent opening of the border is that more potatoes, vegetables and products from Colombia enter and more young people emigrate from Venezuela.
José Guillén Méndez is a producer in Mérida, at El Molino.
“I am 40 years old, but where am I going to go?
We have the land, we have plenty of water, what we need is financial support and guarantees to produce”, he comments by phone from the Andes.
"These trucks that enter the country from Colombia are not stopped by anyone, but the Venezuelan producer passes through 50 alcabalas, where he is obliged to leave merchandise," says another producer from Trujillo, Julio La Cruz.
“There is little labor left in the countryside, and most of them are old.
Because it is about living or dying and that is why people are leaving,” adds the man from Trujillo.
Until 2014, La Cruz worked in the National Seed Program that provided the plants for planting.
Until 2014, Venezuela exported potatoes to the Caribbean, adds Arciniegas.
The farmer from Trujillo recounts that the seed initiative collapsed that year, the germplasm banks that were created were lost due to the constant blackouts that are experienced in the interior of the country and with it the crop yields fell.
If a hectare in good conditions has a yield of between 30 and 40 tons of potatoes, with the worn out Venezuelan seeds, genetically degenerated after so many cycles, only between seven and eight tons per harvested hectare are achieved.
Farmers in Venezuela farm against everything.
With the bad weather of an economy that is trying to get out of the pit with a recovery that opens the ditch of enormous inequalities and leaves the lowest labor activity rate in the region (53%).
Also with this rainy 2022 that has complicated planting.
The union has sought support from the Venezuelan government and has asked it to protect the item along with others such as corn, rice and balanced feed for animals, in favor of national production.
Authorities in the sector have assured that they will put a stop to smuggling, but the markets continue to be flooded.
In Venezuela there is no bank credit because the Government has used the reduction of the legal reserve as a measure to contain inflation, for which the producers proposed that 1% of the final price of the potato be dedicated to a fund for the management of pests and it is the potato itself —and those who consume it— who pay for its recovery, says Arciniegas.
“We have been receptive but changes do not occur, we have been waiting a long time.
With three or four failed harvests,
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