MIDA -- Keeping producers unproductive.

 Sun, 01 Aug 2010

The Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA - Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario) has been at it again, developing programs to "help" producers. The front page of "La Prensa", a local newspaper proudly touted what MIDA was doing to help producers in Cocle, a province just outside of Panama City.

The picture showed a grower picking an orange, one of several that could be seen in the photo. The caption discussed how MIDA was helping growers plant orange trees and "limon persa" trees. The "limon persa" is better known in the US as a Tahiti Lime. I know this because I have a farm with over 500 lime trees in production.

I am one of several small farms in the area with products like limes, and grow them in the hopes that my production will pay for maintaining the farm. Unlike many producers here, I don't depend on the income from my limes for my livelihood, but I wouldn't mind earning enough to make improvements on the farm.

MIDA, though, seems bound and determined to ensure that no one can ever make anything as a producer. My farm produces some 5,000 limes per week. Not bad, and at anything over about $0.06/ea, would help pay for irrigation, fertilizing, trimming, and maintaining the grounds around the trees. What I can sell, on a good week, though, amounts to some 1,000 limes. The rest just drop to the ground and rot.

Now it's not just that the government is encouraging (not just encouraging, they actually helped procure and plant the trees in question) growers to grow crops that aren't in demand, it's that they're helping folks within a stones throw of our principal market (Panama City) take our market away. I mean, why transport the few thousand limes Panama City demands 250 miles, when they only have to go 50 or less.

Reminds me of a similar program some years ago when they were encouraging everyone to plant corn. Then the Government of Panama bought a boatload (literally) of corn and flooded the market. To add insult to injury, they only paid subsidies to farmers within 150 miles of Panama City where the boat landed. I lost two tons of corn that year. Swore I'd find a product that didn't have so many growers. Now that my trees are five years old and in full production, it seems the government has targeted my limes.

Would be nice if I could just sell what I produce -- or even half of it. But these programs are all one-sided. Produce a bumper crop of something, but forget that production, without a market, does more harm than good. So in a couple of years I'll probably have to find another crop to sit on. On the bright side, we're never out of lemonade.

David-

MIDA -- Keeping producers unproductive.

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