Potato Review

38 POTATO REVIEW SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 GROWER PROFILE SIX-YEAR TRIALS PROGRAMME James Foskett Farms Ltd has been appointed Strategic Potato (SPot) Farm East and will be embarking on a six-year programme of trials and demonstrations designed to continue the work undertaken by Andrew Francis on the Elveden Estate near Thetford in Norfolk. “We offer a good portfolio of soils and crops and we are constantly striving to make improvements, so we really feel like we have something to offer the industry,” said farmmanager Mike Shapland. “We’ve heard really good things from other growers about the SPot Farm programme at Elveden so we are pleased to be able to work with Andrew and his team there, and with AHDB, during this transitional season before hitting the ground running as hosts in our own right.” AHDB’s Tim Isaac, head of arable knowledge, added: “This year is a critical one for potato growers. It is their last with diquat, probably their last with CIPC, and many in the east are starting on the back foot when it comes to water availability. The SPot Farm programme is designed to help growers make changes and we will be tackling these key issues via a range of demonstrations, many of which were started in previous seasons.” use trickle irrigation so we don’t have to wet the canopy which encourages blight. Athlete gives us an element of protection against potato cyst nematode so that’s why it is the rotation. “We have nothing in our armoury to deal with pests like wireworm and PCN so we have to pick our fields very carefully, keep the rotation right and grow resistant varieties. Our potato crops are relatively resistant to blight as well – that little percentage difference between varieties can have a huge effect but across all the organic crop we grow there is no fire brigade treatment – if the weeds get you, or blight or aphids, you are stuck and that comes back to the price we expect to get for our produce. Whatever we make it has to cover the fact that we’re taking huge risks and I can tell you that really sharpens your mind. “We expect to get something like double the conventional price on nearly all our organic crops and we need that because we don’t have the yields and its difficult to get fertility into the ground. We can’t just put on 100kg of nitrogen and the fertilisers we do use are very expensive. We rely on a combination of digestate and fertility building crops though we can top up with a nitrogen-based organic fertiliser but it is extremely expensive and very slow to react.” Establishing cover crops can add significantly to overall costs in an organic rotation, James points out. “You can have a year or two with no income from a field, apart for the single farm payment, but we have to do it. People might think let’s grow some organic spuds but the issue is what are you going to do with the rest of the rotation?” Perhaps surprisingly, James reckons that potatoes are one of the easier organic crops to grow, at least from the point of view of labour requirements. “We don’t have to hand weed them, we can use a mechanical hoe, we ridge up and we use a greenburner which is very effective against weeds. We set up the beds, destone them and let them green up before we plant and then we use the greenburner again just prior to crop emergence. We’ll probably go through once or twice with the hoes or ridgers just to keep on top of the weeds until the canopy closes up – if we didn’t do all that, fat hen would take over.” What about the tuber diseases which are a perennial problem for conventional prepack growers? “Black scurf can be a big issue and black dot can come in if we leave crops in the ground too long. We don’t have the protection of chemicals such as Amistar so it’s a matter of being really timely with management decisions and getting crops out before symptoms have a chance to develop. “It’s about good management all the way through,’ he emphasises. ‘You can’t produce organic crops on a whim and you have to be totally dedicated but it can be quite rewarding because you become a real grower again. Anybody can grow a crop of spuds conventionally if they have mind to but its different with organic and I think that’s why we quite enjoy it. There is always something going on, we’re harvesting something nearly all year round and we employ a lot of people, though I have to say that if we can’t get foreign workers then the organic crops would be the first part of our business that would go out of the window.” “We’re growing about 70–80 acres of potatoes at the moment over 500 acres of organic land and we’re supplying all the major retailers. We sell a lot to Abel and Cole for their box schemes and we export quite a few organic spuds to Ireland but in the UK we are miles away from the rest of the world on organics so I think there is mileage to be had if the marketing is done properly. Conversion hasn’t increased the number of customers for our potatoes but for organic vegetables overall, East Suffolk Produce has something like 60–70 different outlets.” Organic production sits reasonably well with the conventional potato crop, James concludes. “There are lots of things we have learned on organics that we are now using on conventional land and that’s especially positive at the moment when we are losing so many chemicals.’ The conventional side is ticking along, he adds. ‘We grow a lot of non- organic spuds and onions and we have the usual cereals and sugar beet in the rotation. We do the best job we can, investing all the time in technology so that we can be as efficient and profitable as possible.”

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