Tonight, there are almost a million pounds of potatoes about to go bad in cold storage containers in San Antonio village. The red potatoes are from the fields of mennonite farmers, but they say they can't find a market because there's too much contraband to compete with.
Here's the story:
Take a turn off the picturesque San Antonio Road and you'll come across these cold storage containers - stuffed with thousands of bags of local red potatoes that no one wants to buy.
Voice of: Potato Farmer
"The wholesalers are not buying because they cannot sell these."
Reporter
"How are you going to sell all these produce here, the potatoes?"
Voice of: Potato Farmer
"We have no idea. We are just like are these potatoes going to rotten? Because we're talking about seven to eight thousand bags is close to a million pound and they are going to let that rotten off. I mean it's like a problem. And what is really happening is the people are starting to grumble about the product."
"It's getting a little soft. We still have good product. It's getting a little soft and they want to like sprout and then we get the blame. Who is it to blame at? It's it's us. But the same times we have been storing this from first of March till now."
"So we are having big expense trying to help Belize."
But he says because of contraband, consumers don't choose these local potatoes.
Voice of: Potato Farmer
"Right now I myself we have like one thousand seven hundred bags left and our neighbors they have like seven thousand altogether."
"So that would be five. So and they are not moving just spared. We could say none at all. We have a little bit but that's not what we call moving."
Reporter
"Just to make sure I understand. So you are not selling in the market or the people are not buying or the people at the market not buying from you or what is happening?"
Voice of: Potato Farmer
"Well people are buying but prefer the white ones. So if you have the white ones and they're all polished and they are all pretty. You want the white ones. So these stay behind. So it's probably not you guys buying, but end of the day you guys are the problem, because you prefer the Mexican too right. It's just because too much contraband right. So um we're faced by the same problem, there's too much. We are convinced if that would be stopped we would have these potatoes sold in a month or two."
But now they don't have a month or two left:
Voice of: Potato Farmer
"Why they are here is because um we had a quite a bit of job already like we're trying to get the government to close borders stuff that is coming from from out of country like Mexico and some of those, I would say some of those I can really appreciate that they're working on it, but then I'm not going to use names but we are convinced that there are people that pull down what others try to build right."
The potatoes are produced in farms at 7 miles community and San Antonio.
We'll be seeing a response form the ministry of agriculture.
