According to official figures, the 2023 Polish potato harvest will break the old low record set ten years ago. Never before have so few potatoes been removed from the ground in Poland. This is not only due to a disappointing hectare yield, but also certainly to a smaller acreage.
The Polish potato sector can be called unique in two cases. On the one hand, it has the tightest potato harvest in the EU-5, the smallest since 2013, which amounted to 5,74 million tons. According to official figures from the GUS statistics service, this year's total harvest will not exceed 5,5 million tons.
Major grower stops
On the other hand, there is the fact that in Poland the large potato growers are giving up and small companies continue with the cultivation. This is bad news for efficiency - and therefore yields. In Northwestern Europe, the large potato growers are getting bigger and swallowing up the acreage of many small companies. In Poland, companies that traditionally focus on grain and beets are more likely to opt for crops that they can harvest with a combine or a beet harvester. Sugar beet cultivation in particular was very profitable last year and again this year. The risks in these crops are much lower than with potatoes.
The GUS estimates the hectare yield at only 29,4 tons per hectare. That is 4% lower than what was harvested in 2022. With 187.000 hectares you get 5,5 million tons of consumption, seed potatoes and starch potatoes. This summer, even lower figures of only 176.000 hectares were discussed. A significant drop of 12%. Ultimately, the decline has been somewhat muted, but the harvest volume is still half a million tons below last year.
Import
The Polish potato prices were already in good shape earlier this fall. With the most recent yield figures from September 30, it is expected that the market can remain at a positive level, provided that cheap potatoes are not imported from other destinations.