A farmer in the Bekaa packages potatoes. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Akkar governorate farmers stopped harvesting this year's potato crop on Monday to protest the low profits on the Lebanese market.
Akkar Farmers' Union head Abdel Hamid Saqr issued a statement Monday decrying the marginal profits, which farmers blame on cheap potato imports from Egypt and overland smuggling from Syria.
Lebanon's potato harvest lasts from April until early June each year.
“The current selling prices set for the products caused huge losses that farmers cannot afford," said Saqr said in his statement.
He added that farmers, merchants and other workers planned a protest for Tuesday at a vegetable market in Akkar to "express and convey the farmers’ demands to the [caretaker] Prime Minister [Najib Mikati] and the agriculture minister, who bear full responsibility for the losses incurred by the farmers."
Farmers harvesting crops in North Lebanon. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A kilogram of imported Egyptian potatoes costs LL10,000 on the local market, whereas the production cost of Lebanese potatoes is LL25,000 per kilogram, meaning they are priced even higher to consumers. Given this discrepancy, many are resorting to the cheaper Egyptian alternative.
Ibrahim Tarshishi, head of Bekaa Farmers Association, another agricultural entity, told L'Orient Today that “the Lebanese government's approval of the entry of two Egyptian vessels ... carrying potatoes and onions, exceeded the time frame stipulated in the bilateral trade agreement between the two nations.”
Per the 1998 Executive Program to Support Trade Exchange between Lebanon and Egypt, Egyptian potatoes should only be allowed into Lebanon from the beginning of February to the end of March of each year.
“However, the shipment of Egyptian potatoes was made in April,” Tarshishi explained to L’Orient Today.
There was no potato harvest in the Bekaa this year, but Tarshishi said the Bekaa Farmers Association is still concerned. Factors affecting the livelihood of one farmer in Lebanon affect the whole industry, he explained.
“Today it’s them, but tomorrow it could be us,” Tarshishi said, adding that the farmers of Bekaa “stand in full solidarity with the farmers in Akkar.”
‘Mikati and Hajj Hassan responsible’
“We hold the Lebanese state, in the person of the [caretaker] Minister of Agriculture [Abbas Hajj Hassan], and the [caretaker Prime Minister] Najib Mikati, fully responsible for the losses incurred by farmers as a result of irresponsible decisions that prove that there are deals with some merchants exploiting farmers’ fatigue,” said the Akkar Farmers' Union in a statement published Monday.
Akkar's farmers asked that Lebanese security services take "responsibilities by preventing potato smuggling at the land border crossings, which contributes to flooding the local market and more losses to farmers,” the statement continued.
“We urge all merchants and farmers to commit until announcing, during the next few days, so that exploitation will not take place from some greedy monopolistic merchants,” the statement concluded.
Also on Monday, Several potato farmers occupied the road between Lebanon and Syria at the crossroads of the vegetable market in Al Abdeh, L'Orient Today's correspondent in the north reported.
The farmers said they would refuse passage to any truck loaded with potatoes, and called on the relevant ministries to seek to stop the smuggling of potatoes into Lebanon.
Reporting contributed by Michel Hallak