Jordanians urged to continue tomato boycott

Last Monday, the Consumer Protection Society urged Jordanians to sustain their boycott of tomatoes. However, leading agricultural institutions described the boycott campaign as 'misleading'.

Mohammad Obeidat, CPS president, said that the campaign -which the society launched early this week- has begun to bear fruit, noting that prices of tomatoes in the local market have already dropped. “Prices of tomatoes dropped today by 20-25 percent, as many people decided to stop buying tomatoes because of [their] high price.”

Agriculture sector leaders, however, on Monday said that the boycott campaign of tomatoes is ‘misleading’, claiming that it is not based on a scientific judgement or true understanding of the nature of the sector and its production mechanism.

Thirteen leading agricultural societies and associations issued a statement saying that the agriculture sector suffers from a number of complex challenges, and that the “last thing it needs right now is misleading propaganda”.

In the statement, a copy of which was made available to The Jordan Times, the sector representatives attributed rising tomato prices to shrinking cultivated lands due to the high cost of labour, water, and energy and the levying of new taxes on production inputs.

They also claimed that climate changes during this year and the floods that inundated vast lands damaged a substantial portion of this year's tomato crop.

A total of 500 tonnes of tomatoes are consumed daily in the Kingdom, with the fruit being produced in several parts of the country, including the Jordan Valley and the highlands.