Kiev. Ukraine. Ukraine Gate – January 4, 2021 – Agriculture
The economist of the investment department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Andriy Yarmak said that Ukraine, which is officially considered one of the three largest potato producers in the world, at the same time, due to the domestic shortage of this product, is one of the largest importers of potatoes, and buys it in Russia.
“In just one 2019/20 season (July 2019 to June 2020 inclusive), almost half a million tons of fresh potatoes were imported for consumption, excluding seeds! This makes Ukraine one of the world’s largest importers of potatoes for the fresh market, as other leading importers (Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany) import potatoes mainly for processing or re-export. However, it is officially considered that Ukraine is one of the three largest potato producers in the world, behind China and India (by the way, this is not the case at all)” Yarmak stressed.
According to the expert, in 2020 Ukraine not only failed to provide itself with potatoes, but also bought them in Russia.
“There is only one country in Europe that sells dirty potatoes with soil in supermarkets. Yes, this is Ukraine. And yet – the volume of sales of potatoes in supermarkets in Ukraine is less than the volume of sales of oranges. “These facts are important for understanding why Europe’s granary failed to provide itself with ‘second bread’ in 2020, and even bought it not somewhere but in Russia,” Yarmak wrote.
The FAO representative stressed that the vast majority of Ukrainian farms that grow potatoes, even professional ones, do not have the equipment to bring potatoes to marketable form: for cleaning, washing, sorting, packaging lines, etc.
“Our producer is better to plant an extra 100 hectares of potatoes than to invest in its completion. After all, if you start to finish and sort potatoes, it turns out that it looks even worse when clean. So, you need to invest in more expensive equipment, change varieties, put irrigation. That is, to change the entire production system, which is very inconvenient and expensive, “said the expert.
According to Yarmak, the qualification of supermarket managers in Ukraine who are responsible for fruit and vegetable departments is also not always at the level of requirements.
“The strategy of cheap potatoes did not work. After all, neither the representatives of the supermarket chain nor the producers in Ukraine could understand the fundamental difference between raw materials and finished products. Potatoes become a finished product only when they are delivered to the supermarket shelf in the form in which the consumer wants to buy it. And 99% of what was sold in Ukrainian supermarkets is raw material, and it should not be there, “the expert wrote.
He also noted that potatoes grown in the EU for processing usually have much higher quality parameters than potatoes grown in Ukraine for fresh consumption.