UK: Growers quit but potato acreage is steady
Speaking at the Potatoes in Practice day outside Dundee, he said that the number of growers in Britain this season would only be just above 2,000, a drop of 200 from 2012, but the 3 per cent of the national acreage they grew has been snapped up by larger-scale growers.
“It is the smaller producers who are dropping out, feeling that enough is enough and not getting sufficient returns on the enterprise for the risks they have to take. On preliminary figures for this year, the acreage seems to be similar to last year’s level.”
Earlier this year, Clayton had speculated that there might be increased plantings on account of high prices for the 2012 crop but this did not seem to have happened.
On yield, he said that it was too soon to predict what the national potato crop would be as he had seen some very poor crops with the tops hardly meeting in the drills but he had also seen some potentially very good crops.
There was some good news yesterday for those who have remained in the potato-growing business, with Dr Stuart Wale, from Scotland’s Rural College, stating that one of the main bacterial diseases that affects the crop, blackleg is in retreat this year.
He also hoped that specialist seed producers would harvest their crops as early as possible, as the longer they remained in the ground, the greater the danger of tuber diseases emerging.
Source: www.scotsman.com
