The drought of the summer still has its effects in Germany. Farmers' associations complain about a lack of financial aid payments and many potato farms are currently having acute problems getting their stored tubers through the winter. The warm weather, lasting deep into the autumn, is what caused all this. Farmer Sylvia Tetzlaff does not want to go and look anymore, according to Focus Online. In the storage boxes, each filled with 900 kilograms of potatoes, again and again she finds batches of putrid tubers, soft and squishy.
The potatoes are strikingly small, many hardly any larger than a 2-euro coin in diameter. Their starch content is far below the average of around 17 percent. "A catastrophic year. Something I have never experienced. Never in my long professional life," says the managing director of the agricultural company Sarmstorf near Güstrow.