Cheap-as chips imperil growers
Kiwis aren’t famed for our ability to resist chips, but do we want a fried local industry with that? The farmers who grow spuds in Kiwi dirt have since last year been calling for protective measures – like a temporary tariff – against the dumping into our market of European-produced frozen fries, which are unwanted in anything like the usual quantities by the northern hemisphere’s Covid-ridden restaurants.
They’re cheap, undercutting the local product in ways that threaten long-term damage to our growers’ commercial viability.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment launched an investigation into the dumping claims late last year, and its preliminary report is expected soon. But the local industry isn’t merely drumming its fingers; it’s reproachfully highlighting evidence that our own more functioning market is being targeted for dumping, and indications that this is still the thin end of the wedge.
The potential damage is, according to Potatoes New Zealand, at a stage where growers face a struggle to survive, with processors taking a hesitant approach to new-season contracts.
The glut of unsold international product has also meant that our own exported products are being undercut elsewhere in the world.
The MBIE report cannot come soon enough. There is a risk the damage could be done by the time any action is authorised from on high.
The Government cannot really be faulted for not acting immediately against the prospect of dumping. Regrettably or not, the way the rules work is that it’s difficult if not impossible to be completely pro-active before there’s actual evidence of dumping happening.
In any case the rules of trade mean that, when dumping is the complaint, there must be an investigation first, and it must be rigorous enough to withstand scrutiny from overseas.
In the meantime the domestic growers are making a case with the public.
They assert that the Government could act within World Trade Organisation regulations to fend off under-priced dumping, and do so without imperilling free trade negotiations with the European Union and the United Kingdom.
One example being the tariffs imposed on hightensile wire suppliers from our nothing-if-notsensitive Chinese trading partners.
And let’s not kid ourselves about the alternatives. It’s hardly plausible that relying on appeals to Buy NZ Made will suffice.
Processors are unlikely to factor expectations of potato patriotism into their contracts with domestic growers. Not when so many consumers are looking for savings wherever they can find them.
(At least such a call would have more validity than notorious stunt in 2003 by US politicians upset by French opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. Restaurants serving Congress were instructed to rename french fries as freedom fries. Much mockery resulted, and rightly so.)
A degree of patriotism isn’t entirely trivialising the issue, at least when the definition extends to legitimate defence of an industry within the socarefully-negotiated rules of international trade.
A campaign to buy local fries under the hashtag #saveourfries has been under way for some time. Perhaps more ambitiously, Belgians were last year encouraged to double down on fries. Nutritionists might have something to say about any call issuing within our own shores being quite so cavalier about encouragements to increase the quantities of fries we consume.
A campaign to buy local fries under the hashtag #saveourfries has been under way for some time.