Potatoes remain a vitally important source of carbohydrates for Irish consumers, with 212,000t sold in Ireland in 2019 to the value of €234m in sales.

On average, a pack of potatoes is bought every second in Ireland.

Attendees at this year’s National Potato Conference heard these key performance insights Cliona Lynch of Kantar Worldpanel.

After a 25% recovery in sales volumes from 2012 to 2015, potato sales have stablished to around 210,000t annually. This is despite a slight increase on retail prices in 2019.

According to research from Kantar, consumers are purchasing potatoes in smaller volumes, but with greater regularity. Bags of under 2.5kg in weight now represent 40% of total potato sales volumes.

Importance of the potato sector

IFA president Tim Cullinan opened the conference with an acknowledgement of the contribution of the potato sector to the agri food sector.

Some 200 potato growers invest €60million annually to produce around 8,000ha of potato crops.

However the area of potatoes planted in 2019 was the second lowest on record, just ahead of 2018.

Cullinan outlined how retailers are taking the lion’s share of the margin on potatoes, while farmers are bearing all of the risk, saying: “Retailers and packers have to wake up to that and act now if they want to have a potato industry in the future.”