Potato Review

32 POTATO REVIEW SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 ORGANICS currently operate that all takes time.” Nick lists the principal agronomic challenges faced by organic potato producers as blight, wireworm and nematodes, be they PCN or free-living species, all of which, he believes, are getting worse. Part of the answer, he agrees, will be the adoption of varieties that offer better resistance to common pests and diseases. “There are new varieties in the pipeline and we are making progress but it is not easy and it’s not quick – they will often show great potential but then we will find an Achilles heel. Customers are very impatient but a variety that grows well in Switzerland or Germany may not work over here because we have a different climate and a different set of growing conditions. This year, for example, we trialled a really good variety which came down with a whole lot of internal problems that growers just don’t have on the Continent. “We remain 100% committed. We grow a lot of potatoes and we store a lot so we are heavily involved, approaching 40% of the UK market. We started with 20 acres but we’re now up to nearly 500, and we’re in it for the long term, but organic growers need to get better, smarter and more professional and produce more volume. We’ve done all of that and that’s why we’re still here but the idea that you can make it work with just 50 acres is pie in the sky. You need investment in specialist machinery, you need economy of scale but you also need absolute attention to detail. We have two dedicated farm managers and we simply can’t be reactive – we have to micro-manage production.” Perthshire grower Andrew Skea is a major supplier of organic seed and ware. His company, Skea Organics, is part of the GPS breeding programme, a joint venture with grower co-operative Grampian Growers and packer E. Park and Son. He recalls the boom time at the start of the new century and he has an interesting theory about what went wrong. “I get the impression that the market seems to be growing again but it is slow compared with 2000–8 when it just seems to expand at an amazing speed. Then there was a massive downturn. Total consumption of organic potatoes peaked at about 50,000 tonnes for the whole of the UK but over the following years that figure dropped to 35,000, then 25,000 and I just remember thinking surely it’s going to reach a plateau. The figure finally bottomed out at around 10,000 tonnes a year so we lost 75% of the market over that period while other vegetables weren’t nearly as badly affected and the market for dairy products continued to grow. “My theory is that there was just too much supply. Potatoes were very available and the supermarkets were able to take on big volumes. I think they used potatoes as a demonstration that they were “organic” and I believe that the supply was quite in excess of genuine organic demand – and they weren’t that much more expensive than conventional potatoes. “With the recession the retailers convinced us that we were poor,” he continued. “They took all the high value things off the shelves and everybody spoke about the need to tighten their belts, but for a big chunk of society that was nonsense. People who were on salaries did not have to take cuts in pay and at the same time their mortgage payments came down. Supermarkets wanted to give the impression that they were supplying customers who were hard pressed and I think they convinced people that they were poorer than they actually were.” ‘Generally high quality’ Sales figures confirmed a drop in consumption but was this also a reaction to poorer quality standards for organic produce when compared with conventional crops? Andrew thinks not. “The quality of organic potatoes in generally pretty high,” he maintained. “There have been times of short supply when retailers have compromised [on grading standards] but for 16 out of the 20 years that I have been growing organically, that’s not been the case at all. “I think we’re seeing growth again but not as it was in the early part of the century when the big packers were going to all the growers in this area and telling them to produce organic potatoes – we’re not seeing any of that now.” He suspects that other vegetables are doing rather better. “We’re farming about 1000 acres and our main cash crop is potatoes but we have two neighbours, one of them growing broccoli, the other growing carrots and they seem to be requiring more land.” What advice does Andrew have for a new grower considering organic conversion? “The obvious thing is bight and the fact that there are really no easy solutions but in all ➜