The low production of palm, affects producers

Image: Expreso

Dumping, unnecessary imports and low prices are the causes of the deterioration of the national production of palm, growers of Quevedo (Los Ríos) and El Empalme (Guayas) agree on that, these two were areas of great expansion in the golden age of palm.

“Big extractive companies play with us,” says Eladio Varas, palm oil grower, “when they need something threy attract us, if we are in conversations with some company La Fabril (Rio Manso) comes and says: I’ll take this at 105 (dollars per ton of fruit) but after three or four days, or a week, they say hey! the price dropped, now we’re going to pay 92 or 93 (dollars).”

This practice, according to the commercial dictionary is called dumping, which means unfair competition; i.e. buy above the market value to get the other players out of competition.

The peasants, tormented by high costs and low productivity since they have not fertilized, resort to logic to point out that the change of the productive matrix has not reached them: “We demand in February, that we found out that having red oil, they had imported a lot of oil from Peru, and they did it again a few months after considering there was sufficient local oil. How can could they not control it? we are victims of the industry, so the price has fallen,” notes Victor Garcia, from Agropalma.

Source: http://expreso.ec/expreso/plantillas/nota.aspx?idart=8321288&idcat=38269&tipo=2