Potatoes: 21/03/2017

Wholesale ex-farm potato prices reported to the IFA

Comment: The recent inclement weather has seen a spike in potato sales. Growers under pressure to move ambient stored product and others wanting to grade potatoes for seed, combined with no land work, is creating a reasonable supply of potatoes on the wholesale and peeling market. However, the fact remains that stock levels are less than last year domestically and across the UK and Europe. Farmers need to remain patient and when the factors alluded to above disappear, the market landscape will be different. Some growers in the south and southeast have made small progress in plantings, but, in general, land is still too wet. However, a worrying development is the demand for potato land and for varieties of seed whose end-markets are already saturated and in decline. Growers need to constantly remind themselves that we had an increase of 5% in acreage last year and all evidence points to large area increases in the UK and across mainland Europe for 2017.