Potatoes Without Borders

A Yorkshire farmer in Britain credits the use of tailored nutrition and some biologicals with boosting the overall health of his potato crop. Richard Smith farms 3,000 acres of combinable crops including 320ha of potatoes. “Biologicals have a part to play in general crop health – keeping them in the mix is important, it’s just vital that you understand where best to use them in your programme,” he says.

On Monday 27 February 2023, potato breeder HZPC celebrated its 125th anniversary. For HZPC, this was a day with an extra golden edge. Dr. A.A.M. Brok, Commissioner of the King of the Province of Friesland, also presented HZPC with the certificate for the predicate “Royal” on Monday afternoon in Joure. With the predicate Royal, HZPC has now become “Royal HZPC Group”, including the subsidiaries STET, HZPC, and ZOS.

Irish international development agency Vita launched the book ‘Growing the Potato Crop’ by former Teagasc stalwart and renowned potato expert John Burke a few years ago. The book, which is expected to be a significant game changer for potato farmers in East Africa, focusses on improving potato productivity in sub Saharan Africa. Iverk Produce has uploaded the 395 page book as a pdf file on its website.

U.S. headquartered Lamb Weston is making significant strides in constructing a big potato processing plant with an investment of $250 million in Argentina, according to a news report by Hector Huergo for Clarin. The construction of the new plant began a year ago and is progressing on schedule in the Mar del Plata Industrial Park. The entire production of the plant will be earmarked for the international market.

In 2006, the United States opened the Japanese market for fresh U.S. chipping potatoes. For the first time since World War II, potatoes grown in the U.S. could be exported to Japan and processed into potato chips. The U.S. potato industry now wishes to turn its attention to the bigger goal of opening the Japanese market for fresh U.S. table-stock potatoes.

The processed potatoes market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.2% between 2022 and 2027, according to recently released report by Technavio. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 41.71 billion. The growth of the market is said to depend on several factors, including a growing focus on expanding production capabilities for potato processing, growth of organized retailing, and increasing prominence of private-label brands.

Agriculture is a fundamental part of Scotland’s economy and modern farming activities can have a profound effect on our landscape, communities, and diversity of landscape, writes Adam Christie, Managing Director at Scottish Agronomy in a recent blog post on the farmer-owned cooperative’s website. With the pressure of feeding the eight billion mouths now on the planet, up from three billion as recently as 1960, “the difficulty is going to be finding the balance between saving the planet and feeding the world,” Mr. Christie says.

These days farmers are encouraged to be experimental, and to conduct trials on their own land to see what works best for them. What agronomists may not say is just how nerve-wracking it can be. And that goes double when doing something that has rarely, if ever, been done before, writes Jeff Melchior in a news article for AlbertaFarmer Express.

Ongoing field trials in southern Sweden presented an opportunity for researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to let a group of consumers see one of those crops for themselves. The trials were of a late-blight-resistant transgenic potato developed from the King Edward variety. Following a field visit, there was a positive change in risk perceptions and attitudes.