Potatoes Without Borders

If you sit down and talk to many of our parents and grandparents, they will remember harvesting potatoes from the garden growing up, and getting rid of the small, undersized potatoes, says Kara Oosterhuis in this edition of The Successors podcast by RealAgriculture. Flash forward to 2014, and Little Lake Farms Ltd., based out of Burdett, Alberta in Canada, decided they were going to base their farming operation around the very thing that used to be considered not sufficient enough: little potatoes.

Veg of Lund, parent company of Sweden’s DUG that is the maker of DUG potato milk, announced last week that the European Patent Office notified its intent to approve the company’s vegan potato emulsion patent. Veg of Lund’s says its comprehensive patent portfolio creates the conditions for the company to develop more product categories within new plant-based foods, such as ice cream and cream products as well as alternatives to red and white meat.

From January 24 – 26, Restrain will be exhibiting at the Manitoba Potato Production Days Conference & Trade Show in Canada. Restrain is a manufacturer and distributor of ethylene generators. Restrain generators control sprouting in post-harvest potatoes, in a more natural way than any other agri-chemical method. Restrain is a natural sprout inhibitor based on the natural gas ethylene.

The latest global potato statistics provided by the FAO via its FAOSTAT database were updated in December, 2022. We extracted this 2021 data as it relates to “total production” (in metric tonnes) and present the results for 100 potato producing countries in the table below (ranging from most to least). According to the FAO data, a total of 376 million tonnes of potatoes were produced world wide, with China (94 million tonnes) and India (54 million tonnes) the largest potato producing countries in 2021.

There are worrying signs that the UK’s farmers are starting to turn their backs on the potato, leading to predictions of higher prices and shortages for the British consumer, as Lucie Heath writes in this iNews report. Cedric Porter, managing editor of World Potato Markets, estimates there will be a 10 per cent reduction in the land being used to grow potatoes in 2023, which could lead to a 10 per cent reduction in the harvest.

The 2023 Ontario Potato Conference will be hosted on Thursday, March 2 by the Ontario Potato Board in the Delta Hotel & Conference Center, Guelph. The wide variety of topics to be addressed by speakers were selected from growers’ requests, according to the principal organizer of the Conference, Dr. Eugenia Banks.

The last remaining granular nematicide for potato cyst nematode (PCN) control, Nemathorin (fosthiazate) faces an uncertain future on UK farms, as Mike Abram reports for Farmers Weekly. At the recent Cambridge University Potato Growers Research Association (Cupgra) conference, Scottish Agronomy’s senior potato agronomist Eric Anderson highlighted four areas where action is needed, or more research required.

Throughout 2022, potato growers in the EU were impacted by higher production costs, largely from energy, fertiliser and transportation. As Alice Witchalls reports in a news story for Mintec, higher costs are weighing on growers’ profit margins and are driving the cost of cultivation and storage to unsustainable levels. There is a risk that in consecutive seasons some farmers will opt to grow alternative crops.

A Scottish potato grower found that investing in better air flow in his stores, had reaped major benefits for crop quality and energy costs, while also reducing the environmental impact, as John Sleigh reports for The Scottish Farmer. James Fairlie, who grows potatoes at Kirkton of Monikie, in Angus, recently had air curtains fitted to two of his stores and is already noticing a difference in air flow, energy use and quality of his crop.

Retail potato trade over the Christmas period was buoyant in Ireland and it is now back to usual levels, according to the Irish Farmers Association’s (IFA). Planted area is expected to reduce again in Ireland. In the U.K., IFA reports that movement over the holiday period appears to have kept up with expectations. In Europe, processing factories are back to full production after the holiday break, and confidence in the export market for frozen potato products is strong.

A new report by Expert Market Research gives an in-depth analysis of the global frozen potato products market. According to the report, the growing popularity of quick service restaurants (QSRs) in both developing and developed countries is driving the global frozen potato market. North America and Europe dominate the business, but the Asia-Pacific area is likely to become one of the most profitable frozen potato marketplaces in the near future.

You’re familiar with whey, pea, and soy, but potato protein? It might not be just a fad, writes Julia Savacool in a news story published by Yahoo!life. According to Savacool, a new study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise finds that consuming protein extracted from potatoes has the same benefits for helping your body rebound after a workout as consuming milk protein.