Farming: Time to cut waste in potato crop

Almost half of the potatoes grown in this country do not complete the journey to the consumer, with waste and rejection cutting down potential sales at every point in the growing and processing chain.

That was the staggering finding of a major exercise covering 40 English producers growing potatoes for supermarket giant Waitrose.

Dr Simon Bowen of Solanum, who supplies the retailer, told growers meeting in Perth this week that work he had carried out showed some 42 per cent of the crop was discarded or lost at some point or other in the production line.

Earlier Dr Stuart Wale, potato specialist with the Scottish Agricultural College, had stated that potato producers in this country would have to concentrate more on reducing waste than in targeting bigger yields.

"We are unlikely to be able to continue to push up yields but there are plenty opportunities to improve efficiency and cut out waste," he said. "In fact, growers throughout the world will have to cope with far more restraints on their production than has previously been the case."

Wale was using the Foresight report published earlier this week by leading research workers in the UK that called for a radical rethink on how food is produced in the world and how finite resources such as water and land would limit increasing production.

One of the scientists who provided underpinning evidence to that report, Professor Peter Gregory, director of the Scottish Crop Research Institute, said that there was now great pressure on research to improve efficiencies in crop production.

He highlighted an area where so far little work has taken place; that of root production in the potato crop. This underground action is incredibly variable with the roots of some varieties five times the depth of others. Although it was early days in the research work, there was the potential for saving irrigation water with the deeper rooted varieties.

Bowen - who highlighted the importance of correct soil type in choosing where potatoes will be grown - also suggested that losses could be minimised if crop rotations were pushed out for a longer span as this would reduce some of the predators that affect the growing crop.

However, the highest level of loss came on the picking table after the tubers had been washed with a whole host of reasons for rejection now being shown up. These included greening, mechanical damage and skin blemishes.

Even although Bowen's project has only been going for two years, he said the growers involved had been able to reduce losses by 5% but with seasonal factors coming in he was reluctant to say whether this figure was robust.