Prospects for potato prices for the coming season are improving, an IFA growers meeting in Wexford heard.
Jason O’Leary, the potato committee chair, said that old season stocks are rapidly diminishing, with the potential of old crop overhanging the new season potato market receding.
In part, stocks are shrinking due to the high amount of tare (rejected potatoes), the final kick from a difficult year for growers.
Prices will need to be good, considering the costs of growing presented by Shay Phelan of Teagasc.
His start-of-year calculation projected a break-even price of €325/t on a 37t/ha crop of potatoes.
Since then, significant increases in fertiliser, fuel and energy costs will have raised the breakeven price substantially.
The staggering investment potato growers make was highlighted by the fact that Phelan’s costs came in at over €12,000/ha, before the escalation in inputs.
There was a long discussion over blight control strategies.
Phelan highlighted the crucial importance of farmers vigilantly preventing any outbreak of blight, because of the utter lack of any product to control, or even kill off, infected potatoes.
New strains of potato blight being experienced on the continent are increasingly aggressive.
As of yet, very few cases of blight in Ireland have been reported to Teagasc, but Phelan warned that weather conditions this year are more conducive to the fungal infection than last year’s fairly benign conditions.
The lack of blight control in non-commercial crops was highlighted as a potential source of infection.
Farmers were urged to report any blight outbreak, however small, and to control it.
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