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Farmers eagerly await controls on imported onions

by Anesta Henry
2 min read
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Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) James Paul is hoping that Government’s measures to tighten controls on the importation of onions come into effect soon.

“I know that farmers are still today having challenges in terms of marketing the onions, so I think that whatever is intended to be done hopefully will be done soon because the reality is that they are competing with an imported commodity on the market that should not have been allowed to be brought in. This is a situation that must be dealt with soon. And there are farmers who are going to be coming in with more onions soon because the onion season doesn’t finish until around June or so,” Paul said.

The BAS head acknowledged that Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security Indar Weir said he had intervened to protect the interest of local farmers who are now facing competition from imported onions and are finding it difficult to get buyers who were going after the cheaper, imported product.

During a press conference a few weeks ago, Paul lamented that the issue was causing a serious headache for local farmers, with several of them having bags of local onions piled up at their farms because they cannot get them sold to local buyers.

The minister had said that he held a meeting with the Ministry of Commerce and it was agreed that mechanisms must be put in place to control granting licences for persons to import onions. He said the mechanism also requires that the Barbados Agricultural Development Marketing Corporation (BADMC) have enough onions to satisfy the local demand first, especially in cases where there is a shortage on the island.

Paul repeated his calls for authorities to set a standard price for local onions.

“The thing is that the price that local onions are being sold at now is the same price it was 20 years ago. The cost to produce the same onions have gone up since then, so we really need to help our local farmers in this regard by setting a minimum price for onions to be sold at” Paul said.
(AH)

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