Better vegetable grower returns are needed to ensure a “balance” between different enterprise types in the agri-food sector, and to ensure the longer-term viability of the horticultural sector is protected, the special envoy on food systems Tom Arnold told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Arnold stated that indicators on the health of the horticultural sector as a whole had “moved in the wrong direction”, but that there were opportunities for growers to reverse these trends, in comments made at the World Potato Congress in Dublin on Monday.

The issue of the below-cost selling of fresh produce was one that the soon-to-be-established Office for Fairness and Transparency in the Agri-Food Supply chain should examine, he suggested.

“Some of the reason that the horticulture sector has been in trouble has been because the profitability of growers in the sector has been under threat for a long period of time,” said Arnold.

“I do think the below cost selling of food is not a sustainable way to do business and one of the issues where the Ombudsman would have to take a position,” he said.

Demand for potatoes

At the congress, Bord Bia’s director of horticulture told the Irish Farmers Journal that a turn-around in the declining domestic potato consumption trends has been “phenomenal” in recent years, with improved consumer perception of the nutritional characteristics giving positive signals on future demand for the staple.

“If we look at the retail market for example, back in the last decade, it went down to about 154,000t at retail level. That has got back to around 210,000t, and that figure has been maintained for about three years,” he said, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic had increased consumption even further.

Bord Bia’s CEO Tara McCarthy stated that the cost increases facing farmers would have to be “logically” explained to shoppers, given concerns on the “tightness of a consumer’s wallet”.