Warnings of potential Irish potato shortage
Water-logged potatoes in a field of 42 acres owned by farmer Dick Fitzgerald in East Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan
Growers are warning of a potato shortage as they say this year’s harvest is the “worst in living memory”.
The potato harvest is “rapidly turning into a salvage operation” as drills are underwater following recent flooding, the Irish Farmers’ Association has warned.
IFA national potato committee chairman Sean Ryan said that as it stands, “around 60% of crop remains to be harvested”.
“Sizeable losses have occurred already which are likely to substantially increase as we progress through the harvest,” Mr Ryan said.
“Met Éireann data shows some stations have already exceeded the average annual total rainfall and others close to it. Now that we are in November, we are in extremely difficult territory with this much crop left to be harvested.”
Mr Ryan said that the heavy rain has “washed most of the clay off the top of the drills” leaving the crop more prone to frost damage.
“A few hard frosts at this point will wipe out entire crops,” he added.
Edward English of Castlecor Potatoes in Mallow, Co Cork, said there is a challenge this year for growers “to guarantee supply”.
“No one is getting the stuff harvested. It could lead to a shortage of potatoes, but at this moment in time you don’t know – but it will leave things very tight.”
Altogether, Mr English grows about 500 acres of potatoes.
He grows mostly the Rooster variety.
“This time of year we’d hope to have all them harvested but we’ve about 50% harvested, so we still have about 250 acres left to harvest,” Mr English explained.
“It’s significant because all the other potato growers are in the same situation.”
He warned that there would be crop losses as well due to recent flooding.
The IFA's Sean Ryan has warned that growers will not be able to absorb the financial hit if crops are lost due to weather damage, and will need support "to ensure the medium-term survival of the sector".
Mr English said that without weather improvement, there could be a serious "knock-on for delayed planting, and it could have a knock-on effect that there might not be enough potatoes to see us through until next year’s crop is grown".
However, he said that while support would help growers greatly, "from a personal point of view, it's hard for Government to get involved in weather scenarios".
Mr English said that a lot of growers have left the industry, "so you’re finding more and more of the bigger players left and the small guys have left the industry and that’s created its own problem too".
"Potatoes and veg in general, they’ve been too cheap for too long," he said.
"I can't predict the future but I would say with the price of potatoes, you could see prices increasing in the shops over the coming months due to shortage and availability issues."
If there is a product that can be grown and produced in Ireland, Mr English said, "it's far more sustainable to grow your own than to be importing".
The rooster variety is commonly grown in Ireland and "is not really threatened by the import market, the chipping varieties would be more affected", he added.
Denis O’Connor, who grows potatoes in East Cork, has said that growers in the area are “all in the same boat” and that if there isn’t some dry weather before Christmas, “it will be very serious”.
“If we could get two or three dry weeks, definitely it would improve things but there’s a pile of damage after being done already,” Mr O’Connor said.
“Even if we do get dry weather, there’s going to be a huge loss. If they were all harvested in good conditions, they were going to be scarce, never mind with all the losses now.”
Normally, Mr O’Connor said he would be finished harvesting by October 31, “but this year, we’ve three weeks of work ahead of us yet”.
“If we had them in store there would be no bother as you would just be bagging out but if we get dry weather in December now, we’ll have to be harvesting and trying to pack them out.”
He added that the costs of harvesting have increased significantly as well for growers this year, adding to the “hardship” of it all.
There are about 300 commercial potato producers in the country, according to Bord Bia.
250 fresh produce growers remain in the country with businesses becoming "more specialised" and "heavily invested" in order to remain competitive "in an increasingly challenging environment", according to Bord Bia's director of horticulture Mike Neary.
He revealed recently that there are only around 60 growers left in field vegetable production in the country; and there are just seven tomato growers left, and one leek producer.
"Over quite a number of years, smaller growers have exited and larger growers took up the production," Mr Neary told the Oireachtas joint committee on agriculture, food and the marine.
"Taking the fruit and vegetable sector as an example, we did a census in 1998 and there were about 400 growers."
Recent seasons have been challenging for the fruit and vegetables sector, with a number of contributing factors, Mr Neary said.
"Key challenges include the high costs of energy and overall higher costs for key inputs; the difficulty of securing sustainable returns from a competitive marketplace to cover increased costs and capital investments; access to and availability of an adequate supply of labour, particularly in the busy growing and cropping season," he outlined.
"These challenges all arise in the context of growing crops in a climate that can be difficult and challenging at times.
"We have seen that this year, with periods of drought followed by excessive rainfall, which have a significant impact on the field and harvesting operations."
