Plans to ship the majority of this year’s potato harvest from Daehongdan County, a big potato-growing area of northerly Yangkang Province, down to Pyongyang, leaving local residents without their normal distribution, have been shelved, Daily NK has learned. As a result, the mobilized citizenry have begun to receive their annual potato distribution; indeed, ration quantities are said to be larger than in many previous years.
A source from the region reported to Daily NK on the 14th, “The original policy that there ‘are not going to be any potato rations’ was changed all of a sudden, and the rations have been distributed. Each person who was mobilized to pull potatoes in Daehongdan has been told they’ll get around 560kg in total, calculated at 70kg per month over eight months.”
“The people here have been overwhelmed with work; the oxcarts and bicycles from their homes were all mobilized for transportation,” the source recalled. “And now those families who were worrying about what they were going to eat over the winter if there were no rations are relieved.”
“Actually there was a lot of annoyance at the policy that only teachers would receive rations and the rest of the potatoes would be sent to Pyongyang, but that is dying down now that the distribution has been handed out,” she added.
“At most, rations do not usually exceed 36kg a month, so the large quantity being given out this month is pretty rare,” she also noted. “The authorities appear to have decided to distribute a larger amount of potatoes since this is a bumper year.”
“For all that, people are questioning why they are giving out this many potatoes when they initially told us that there wouldn’t be any,” she went on. “The authorities hadn’t predicted that this would be a bumper year, and they had rather hastily presumed that demand for potatoes would rise in Pyongyang, so that’s probably why they changed the policy.”
However, there remain doubts whether the authorities will be willing or able to follow through on the distribution of 8 full months of rations. Equally, even in the event that the rations are distributed in accordance with the plan, workers will struggle to exchange or trade them for other products. Compared with rice, potato is not a desirable commodity, it doesn’t keep well, and its value falls even further in times of plenty.
“The storage of potatoes must be taken into account,” the source explained. “In winter they will freeze and from then on they cannot be eaten, so everyone is hurrying to sell them off.”
In Yangkang Province today, 1kg of rice costs 6500won, while potatoes are going for around 600won. Month-on-month, rice has risen by 500 won and potatoes have dropped by around 400 won.
