Croatia: Low potato prices destroying producers

Consumers say that local potatoes should not be more expensive than German or French potatoes. Croatian farmers must set aside 40 percent more money for seed, fertilizers and other costs involved in potato growing and they cannot compete with prices abroad, says Damir Mesarić, potato producer from Belica, a village in Međimurje with the biggest production of potatoes in Croatia, reports Večernji List on August 14, 2016. However, the village’s golden age is now gone. “We lived better twenty years ago when we had seven acres of potatoes than now with twenty. Today, we get less money and more work”, says another potato farmer Nenad Novak. What is making their life difficult are the imports and sale of potatoes in shopping malls at unbelievable prices during the harvest. More