News Potatoes
Which factors influence the potato area?
While not all potatoes are out of the ground yet, the arable farmers are already puzzling over for the coming season. Do factors such as harvesting and irrigation capacity influence the potato acreage for 2020?
Large potato growers, especially with a large acreage on clay soil, had to work with all their might to get all the potatoes above the ground. That has not worked everywhere. It is estimated that about 5% of the acreage for ware potatoes is still in the ground, good for 2.800 hectares. In Belgium, it is said that 1.400 hectares still have to be cleared (1,4% of the acreage).
Land availability
Not being able to harvest in time may have influenced the area to be planned. The other factor may be watering capacity. This is often a limiting factor in the southern and eastern sandy areas in particular. The availability of land can have an increasing effect on the acreage before 2020. Certainly if more livestock farms stop. In addition, the acreage of silage maize has decreased by 9% this year (15.836 hectares), so that more hectares are also released.
In addition to market influences and land availability, the influence of plant protection products should not be smoothed out either. For example, growers are dealing with the disappearance of diquat for haulm killing, and chlorpropham for sprout inhibition. This requires adjustments especially in the variety package.
Buyer strategy
In addition to the grower, the processing industry also pursues a strategy. For the 2019/2020 season, they have calculated with a potato volume of between 27,5 million and 28 million tons in the EU-5, in order to meet the demand. This means that the additional capacity is used and that enough potatoes are available for the long season, after the small harvest in 2018.
This year the acreage in the EU-5 is 652.200 hectares, which with a good growing season has the potential to supply 30 million tons of potatoes. Market insiders therefore expect that processors will allocate the acreage for harvest 2020 on the basis of sufficient raw material. Whether this will be a much larger area remains to be seen. An equal area, or a small increase of 1%, is the most plausible.
Niels van der Boom
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