An awful lot to check when growing tatties

ERIC Anderson, senior agronomist with Scottish Agronomy, yesterday raised questions on the environmental footprint caused by potato growing and, for those not too hot on the size of their carbon footprints, the message was also linked to profitability.

Speaking at an open day at Cupar, Anderson, said that, while the costs of fertilisers and pesticides were often closely monitored by growers, the same was not true of either fuel costs or even the cost of irrigation.

Between these two components, growers could pay around 850 per hectare in energy costs and he believed it was possible to reduce that expenditure by at least 10 per cent.

In order to do so, he advised growers should have a farm fuel audit to find out their costings on even routine operations in the growing crop. But his audit would also require growers to consider if their growing processes were correct and necessary.

Linked to this was his advice to growers that the first thing they should do before committing to growing potatoes in any field was to check the soil structure, the stone content and even, in cases where the ground had been ploughed, if the job had been well done.