Is there enough seed potatoes for strong demand?

"Drought is always good," laughs Van Hoogen when we speak to him during Agrico's annual variety show. The foreman is referring to the high potato prices after last year's disappointing yields. "The situation is a bit different in North Africa, but in Europe money has been made almost everywhere. We therefore expect a lot of demand and good prices.” The situation in Eastern Europe also plays a role. “Due to the drought Poland there is a significant shortage of potatoes there. The same applies to countries such as Romania and the Czech Republic. They all want to have more seed potatoes."

Whether this strong demand can be met remains to be seen. "The yields are slightly below the average of the past 5 years," Van Hoogen estimates. In contrast, there will be last year There is no major difference in availability between the early varieties and the chip potatoes. "The differences that exist occur at the area level. The yield mainly depends on whether or not irrigation was possible."

Better ratio
The potato harvest has suffered a lot of rainfall in recent weeks and is proving difficult in some places. "However, a lot happened last week," says Van Hoogen. According to him, there are currently a few percent of seed potatoes left in the ground. "About 30% of the harvest still needs to be sorted," says Van Hoogen, so he does not have exact figures. "It is clear that the ratio of seed potatoes to oversize is better than last year."

The Agrico foreman is also satisfied with the quality. "There are clearly fewer problems with viruses and scab than last year. We did have some problems with Erwinia at the beginning of the season, but the drought has done us good." All in all, a very different picture than was expected at the beginning of the summer. "The year 2018 was a unique year. It was quite a job to serve everyone as best as possible with our table and seed potatoes. The summer of 2019 seemed to be going in the same direction, but on average we have more potatoes than last season ."

Worries about class cuts
The challenges that exist now mainly concern the follow-up. "This leads to many disappointments, especially in the higher classes of seed potatoes." Agrico urges NAK to give priority in the follow-up inspection to the early varieties intended for overseas destinations. Van Hoogen: "There are growers who request a follow-up inspection twice, which takes a lot of time. Our advice: leave the chip varieties for a while, which can also be done in January."

Van Hoogen concludes that the sector must learn to deal with increasingly extreme weather conditions. "Fortunately, the potato is a strong crop. 2019 was a fairly extreme year, but the potato just held out." In the meantime, Agrico is working on new, robust varieties that will be on display during the 2019 variety show. Special attention was paid to Paradiso, Carazon, Lugano and Levante, the 4 varieties that were placed on the Dutch Variety List in 2019. The growers in question received an award as a reward for this.