Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW JULY/AUGUST 2022 15 POTATO MARKETS “I visited farms growing five acres to over 700, and when visiting small scale farmers who started with very little, I saw that much of their learning had come from their own experience of successes and failures at their own risk. It is evident that every piece of land counts when you only have five acres and only modest profits are achievable. Moreover, environmental gain does not need to be at the cost of commercial progress, in fact it can accelerate it,” she said. Evolving markets Claire met with the Kenyan Potato Council, which works with more than 80,000 growers, she was told that a high percentage of people in rural communities responsible for the potato crop are women who have very small plots of land. The planting of potatoes became traditional alongside the colonisation of Africa in the 1800s. This coincided with cultural tribal changes and more production in village units rather than the hunter-gatherer way of life which previously prevailed. “The high numbers of women responsible for the production of potatoes is thought to be because potatoes not only provide households with healthy nutritious meals for the family but also, when good yields can be achieved, provides additional income. This extra income for the household is often spent on the children’s education,” she said. “Linking these small growers to a local market becomes extremely important.” Claire met with Florence Kinoti, a retired headmistress, who was helping people in her community grow potatoes. Her successes included setting up shared potato storage facilities for the community and embarking on building a water lagoon on her own land. She also met with a young farmer in Kenya, James Nairodi, a first-generation high-grade seed grower, who had rented around 60 acres of land and borrowed money to start his business. “Realising that small scale farmers lacked access to quality seed and higher yielding varieties, he worked closely with the whole potato industry in Kenya and planted apical seed stocks, an approach which is encouraged by the International Potato Centre, CIP. Apical seed is a technique not often used in the UK market. However, when access to quality clean seed is limited, this propagation technique is an affordable approach. Cuttings are produced from tissue culture plantlets which are clean and free from disease. In six weeks, one mother plant can be multiplied to produce eight plants,” said Claire. “While I visited him in the field, he had eight local farmers on the land planting seed. He used his business as a training ground for local farmers who purchased his seed potatoes. He helped them to learn cultivation, planting and crop management techniques.” Seed quality in Chile In Chile, Claire met with Ivette Acuña, the lead potato researcher at INIA, Chile’s national research centre for agriculture. She explained that there were 30,000 potato growers based in the southern seed growing area (70% of all potato growers in the country). Yield is variable depending on the uptake of technology and seed quality was an issue for the potato industry in Chile. Farmers were not using certified seed and opting for home-saved or non-certified seed of lower specifications. Seed production is protected in Chile, with no imported seed allowed in. Growers are dependent on six commercial varieties for the fresh market. “The UK has a complex supply chain that has become technically detailed in order to produce a consistent product. These chains are often linear and not circular.” ➜ Scientists meet at a field in Kenya. Planting in Chile.