Holman unleashes unjustified potato witch hunt

NSC MP Harm Holman has drawn the ire of potato growers after he spoke out strongly against the Innovator potato variety in a parliamentary debate. The fast-food variety that was specially bred to cut long, golden-yellow fries. With his story, Holman shows that little has changed in 25 years. Once again, a potato variety is being unfairly sacrificed.

During a debate on crop protection products in the Lower House on Wednesday 27 November, NSC MP Holman, who himself was a dairy farmer in Drenthe for forty years, decided to take aim at the potato variety Innovator. According to the politician, this variety not only requires a great deal of spraying, 'up to twenty per season', farmers would also be forced to grow it. Simply because McDonald's demands it.

Bold statements
Holman should have read up on it first, or consulted potato growers, before making such statements in the House. It is true that a variety like Innovator cannot do without crop protection. Certainly when the pressure of phytophthora is as high as last season. This makes the variety no exception to the rule. The statement that Innovator requires much more nitrogen can also be discussed.

Then the claim that growers are forced. To start with, potato growers – at least the ones I know – are perfectly capable of making their own choices about which variety they want to grow. No one is forced to do so. It all has to do with the type of soil you farm on, what fits within your business operations and many other large and small factors. In Europe, Innovator is no longer such an innovator, because many growers find that the yield is lagging behind. Those who have the right climate to grow it have achieved an excellent financial return in recent years. Innovator is a tasty 'french fryer' that is not far behind Agria.

For the train
Holman's position is strongly reminiscent of the poison-pieper campaign that was conducted by Milieudefensie and Stichting Natuur en Milieu in early 2000. In the general media, that ball had already been headed in. At the time, it was the pride of the Netherlands, Bintje, who had to pay the price in the publicity. In 2017, the Keuringsdienst van Waarde research programme made a episode about this potato witch hunt. In it, Pim de Ruiter, then head of the nature and environment department within the DOEN foundation, proudly tells how Bintje was pushed in front of a train by environmental groups. Not because the variety was a notorious 'poison user', but mainly because of the symbolic value attached to it. Now it is Innovator who has apparently been assigned the same fate.

The denigration of Bintje ultimately had an effect mainly on supermarkets, who decided to no longer stock the potato on their shelves. Processors did sideline the variety, but that was mainly due to disappointing quality and the arrival of much better alternatives.

Fortunately, Holman also has the solution. He advises McDonald's to choose resistant varieties or organic potatoes. Logical, right? Holman should have consulted the sector first. Never before has it been so difficult to keep potato crops healthy, which certainly required a lot of trickery, especially for organic growers. In most cases, it resulted in a very poor harvest. Many plots were burned to death prematurely or were forced to be heavily sprayed. No environmental benefit. If McDonald's had to rely on that, the cardboard containers would have remained virtually empty this year.

Pain is elsewhere
The real concerns for the potato sector are, on the one hand, the considerably reduced package of resources and, on the other hand, the increasingly aggressive and rapidly evolving phytohpthora strains. Due to the lack of a wide range of active substances, resistance is lurking, which is already painfully clear in practice. Resistant or robust varieties are indeed an important weapon in the battle, but more and more scientists agree that these only have a future if they are used in combination with (a low dosage of) crop protection. In this way, you retain resistance genes for a longer period of time instead of burning them out in one year, as is currently the case.

Holman's statements do not help anyone and they actually create more polarization. When a potato variety requires excessive spraying or fertilizers, the sector solves this itself. It is simply no longer grown because the costs are too high. No one is waiting for a gifpieper2.0 campaign. Have we learned nothing in 25 years?

Niels van der Boom

Niels van der Boom is a senior market specialist for arable crops at DCA Market Intelligence. He mainly makes analyses and market updates about the potato market. In columns he shares his sharp view on the arable sector and technology.

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