Every little bit of aid is welcome of course, no matter for whom it is intended. Even if not enough, it would still count for something. Which is what tomato growers and processors must be thinking about the Lm107,325 in aid which the Ministry for Rural Affairs and the Environment has just announced under the Special Marketing Aid Scheme for Processed Tomato Products. The scheme is divided in two – some of the aid goes to producer organisations and individual growers, the other to the processors, under certain conditions.
In this day and age of millions and billions, Lm107,325 is not a princely sum in any sense. And when it is broken down, it sounds even less impressive: Lm42,930 (just over the lowest Super 5 prize there is available) goes to the producer organisations. How that can be considered an “incentive” for farmers to increase production for tomato processing is anyone’s guess. But it is there. It can help them buy some of (certainly not all) the sulphur the farmers use on the plant as it grows, for instance. Every little bit helps, even if it is only in the realm of a poor man’s pocket money.
Individual farmers also get some aid for the tomatoes they produce that go for pressing. They will not have much left over from the aid, it can be said – they will be getting, hold your breath, four mils (EUR0.009) for every kilogram of tomatoes that is pressed. The processors have conditions to satisfy if they are to get the aid: they are to contract more tomatoes this year than they did last year, for instance. And they are to use at least half of the aid they get to promote products made from local, fresh-picked tomatoes.
When anyone considers the effort that goes into producing the tomato, the aid seems even more insignificant. The seed is sown and nurtured and the plant transplanted individually to the field, which would have been prepared for it, where it will be doing nature’s work, growing and producing, with the farmer helping it along with costly fertiliser, and if not also with scarce water, at least with sulphur to protect it from pests. The tomato plant is of course a prolific producer, it is a natural wonder, so at least if it remains a healthy plant, the farmer’s efforts will not have been in vain.
The Maltese farmer’s lot is a hard one. It is hard abroad also, but in Malta land holdings are small, the market is insignificant and water is in short supply in summer when it is most needed (it is in short supply sometimes in winter, too). With small land holdings, the Maltese farmer cannot possibly own the large machinery that makes the labour abroad so much easier. Much of the work done mechanically abroad, is done manually here.
It is these hurdles and many others which the farmer has to overcome. He is encouraged to export his product in the face of the stiff competition of much bigger producers. For instance, at the open-air markets around Malta yesterday, housewives were buying tins of chopped tomatoes and tomato juice at 10 tins of 400g each to the lira. Imported from Italy. Fresh local tomatoes were going for 15c per kilogram.
It is the Maltese housewife who can best help the Maltese farmer, by choosing to buy the Maltese product. That is the message the government should be selling and emphasising. We should do away with the idea that the Maltese product is inferior to its foreign counterpart. Certainly in tomatoes, the local product is superior by far. Somehow, the harsh conditions under which the Maltese tomato is grown in the rigours of the dry Maltese summer go to produce a healthy product which has no equal. If the Maltese farmer is, in spite of the odds, managing to sell his product abroad, surely it must have attributes which more than make up for the little difference there may be in the price.