According to José Echeverría, President of the market that opens once a week in the Francisco de Miranda avenue at Los Teques, the abrupt climate change and the shortage of implements to work the land is affecting crops, production and prices.
"In January, I bought two kilos of Tangerine for 50 bolivars and I saw on Sunday that the kilo was being sold for 100 bolivars," complained Teresa Guzman, an inhabitant of Las Lomitas, who devotes her Sundays to search for deals in different markets.
"We no longer know how to stretch our money, things are more expensive by the day and what’s worst is that nobody does a thing; it’s like we are all robots because we don’t even complain about inflation anymore, all we seem to care about is finding what we're looking for," said the buyer.
Her thoughts are not far from the truth. The prices of fruits, such as melon and pineapple, which used to be some of the cheapest and more demanded products, are currently above 100 bolivars. Unfortunately we are at the mercy of climate change and we don't have know to cope with it, so costs are constantly increasing.
Echeverria stated that, even though the rains of May hadn’t started, some producing States, such as Lara, Merida, and Zulia, were already registering rainfalls that altered production and increased the final price of the goods.
The climate has changed so much that we are harvesting the products out of season; as in the case of tangerines, which is currently present despite the fact that it is typically obtained in December; the downside is that we will probably not achieve the desired quality or volume in December.
Source: Diario la región