Stark choice facing Scots potato growers

Published on Thursday 29 July 2010 16:56

SCOTTISH potato growers face a clear-cut financial choice - a small charge for membership of the industry certification group or the "massive" cost of allowing disease into the country.

Dr Stuart Wale, potato specialist with the Scottish Agricultural College, said: "The cost of joining the Safe Haven certification scheme is very small. The cost of allowing disease into potato stocks in this country is massive."

The Safe Haven scheme, which is voluntary, requires Scottish potato growers to source their seed from this country as a method of preventing disease from entering Scotland. Dr Wale reckoned the cost of joining was less than 200 per grower.

A self-confessed passionate believer in the high health status of the Scottish seed potato crop, Dr Wale said the four recently confirmed cases of the disease dickeya in the seed growing areas of Scotland was a "real wake-up call for the industry".

He referred to a study carried out in Holland where the costs of brown rot disease, a similar type of wasting disease, had been estimated to be up to €10,000 per hectare for every grower where the problem had been found.

This massive sum came from adding up the loss of sales, the cost of disinfection to get rid of the disease and the renting of clean ground. The same study had shown that the outbreak of this disease was costing the Dutch government more than €7 million annually.

The US has also seen its potato growing areas affected by the spread of this highly infectious disease, which spreads along waterways. Some areas had to be abandoned for potato growing because of the spread of the problem.

Dr Wale also instanced the case of a Welsh grower where ring rot, another disease imported from mainland Europe, had been found on his premises. Even after four years, when it was thought the disease had gone away, symptoms were found in a growing crop and the whole episode had almost put the company out of business.

Within Scotland he accepted there were commercial pressures on some growers linked to pre-packers and major supermarkets but asked growers to consider the consequences of introducing any infectious disease to this country.

Where there is a temptation to try a new variety and the seed was either coming in from abroad or from England, he warned that it was not sufficient just to test the tubers as there was still the possibility the disease would not be picked up in relatively small-scale testing.

The Safe Haven certification scheme was recently described by Allan Stevenson, the chairman of the Potato Council, as a simple robust and practical method of protection from imported diseases.

Some two-thirds of the Scottish seed area is now covered by the scheme but Stevenson warned that those who had not joined up were not only exposing their own businesses to risk but also potentially affecting the health and security of the whole industry.