by MARIA BRADSHAW WITH MORE THAN 4 000 pounds of ripe tomatoes in his storeroom and thousands more in the field and no one to sell them to, St Lucy farmer Arthur Smith is giving them all away - literally. And with thousands of pounds of still-to-be-reaped onions on his hands, the angry farmer said he was thinking seriously about leaving the fields for greener pastures. Smith invited a NATION team to his Barrows, St Lucy farm where he displayed crate upon crate of the bright red tomatoes which he picked two weeks ago still stored in his bond because he had been unable to sell them. "I am trying to find out from Government if farmers are supposed to produce or stop producing," he asked, despair etched on his face. Saying he had been losing thousands of dollars, Smith called on Government to design some kind of policy that farmers could depend on. "We don't want to feel that we have a [duty] to produce and then we can't get the produce marketed because they are also being imported," he said. The importation of vegetables was hurting local producers, said Smith, adding that imported tomatoes were being sold at $1 a pound. He charged that there was no need to import tomatoes because Barbados usually had more than an adequate supply between January and August. The farmer, who has been in the business for 12 years, also charged that supermarkets were not buying from them. "When we call the supermarkets they say they don't want any and we are dumping them daily," he complained. "I am thinking about doing something else but I want to find out from Government if I should continue to farm, because it seems to me that it believes that farmers are not supposed to make a profit." Smith added that he also had thousands of onions still in the ground and the outlook for them was not rosy either. "It is an organised strategy to destroy farmers. It amounts to racketeering. What is the sense in them promoting Agrofest [the national agricultural exhibition to be held later this month] when farmers can't sell their produce?" President of the Barbados Agricultural Society, James Paul, said cases like this had been raised by his body for many years. "The question of importation needs to be regulated," he told the DAILY NATION yesterday. "With the open market there is no co-operation. 'Before, we were able to [deal with] what happened, but now we get the information [on importation] after the fact. Importers are able to hide this information and now we don't get it on a timely basis." Meantime, Smith said he would be giving away the tomatoes to whoever wanted them. "They can bring bags, boxes, whatever, and come for them, even the ones in the ground!" he said.
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