Belarusian farmer grows sweet peppers, Russians think they are from Poland

The Russian Agricultural Inspectorate has detained 14.5 tons of fresh Belarusian sweet peppers. Inspectors paid attention to the fact that the labels on the boxes had been replaced. According to the new labels, the sweet peppers were produced at the farm “David-Universal” from Stolin District.

However, Russians found a label saying that the sweet peppers had been imported from Poland in one of the boxes! Here is the photo of a simple label saying that the peepers are Polish. It is sticking out like a business card.

Euroradio has managed to find the person the Russian Agricultural inspectorate failed to find – the Belarusian producer of the sweet peppers mentioned above. Syarhey Hryb is the owner of the farm “David-Universal”. He grows a lot of sweet peppers and even sells them to Russia on his own, the man said:

“Yes, I do grow sweet peppers, cabbages and apples. I have sold sweet peppers to a private entrepreneur recently. Yet, I do not know how many of my peppers were in the detained consignment. I sold them on Saturday, they took them on Sunday and got detained five days later. How do I know where the truck was in that time? We also sell sweet peppers to Russia on our own. I sold two trucks to Russia earlier and there were no problems. Then I sold them to private entrepreneur Uladzimir Dzyamko. I know him, his is from this district.  And then it began…”

Syarhei has no worries about the future Russian check-up of the farm. It will not be the first time:

"Russians came to check my apple orchard when there were problems with Belarusian apples. My orchard is fine. I am using a European technology here. They arrived, looked at it and left. Let them come again and see. I have sweet peppers!”

Private entrepreneur Uladzimir Dzyamko whose trucks were detained by the Russian Agricultural Inspectorate has no idea where the Polish labels came from:

“Maybe somebody had put them there secretly. Our labels are the right ones – the sweet peppers are from Stolin District. The old labels were removed because there were mistakes in them. So we had to replace them. And they cavilled at it.”

The Russian ‘food war’ has been waged on Belarus for over six months. Medicines were found in Belarusian milk at first. Then Russia suspected Belarus of importing too many apples. Other fruit and vegetables are being checked now.