Northern Europe is planting more and more productive varieties of potatoes, which leads to years of overproduction that drives prices down. In the last 10 years, there have been three campaigns in with a very large surplus of potatoes and very low prices.
As a result, potato producer organizations in France (UNPT), in the Flemish region of Belgium (ABS), and the Walloon region (FWA) have
launched the Interreg GEPOS project to look for alternatives in their regions in the campaigns marked by an excess of production.
The project aims to develop a decision support system that will allow estimating, at the beginning of each campaign, whether or not there is a real probability of significant potato surpluses. In a second step, it will examine the possibilities of different alternative outlets to absorb these additional volumes of potatoes and the conditions in which this would happen.
The project will focus on different sectors, such as the animal feed industry, potato starch industry, biogas (anaerobic digestion), and industrial or agricultural composting. Finally, it will determine if the producers of the region are ready to participate in a large-scale collaboration to make this alternative output possible.
The project, which began last January, is being carried out with the support of regional development. It will end at the beginning of July 2019.
Source: agrodigital.com