Potatoes are trading today at well below the cost of production with good quality product for prepack at not much more than 10 pence per kilo ex farm. There are a number of reasons. The difficulties of fish and chip shops in the pandemic is a big one, a slightly higher yield and production last year is another and now, as a result of Brexit we cannot export to Ireland so that market is lost.
Contracts with packers are a bit higher priced if we had taken them out before planting but unless crops are very good it is difficult to be profitable that way and many growers rely on a high priced year every so often to change the enormously expensive equipment required to grow a potato crop today.
Whilst the area grown and production has declined a little, the number of growers has halved over the last twenty years. Many years ago there was a Potato Marketing Board and growers were allocated an acreage quota which attempted to balance supply and demand. That has of course gone in our strong market culture today but it cannot be said it has resulted in greater prosperity for growers. Potato growers are an optimistic bunch. A high priced year is inevitably followed by increased plantings and the resulting price crash.
We grow for the fresh market and hope to sell smooth and bright skinned spuds to customers who wash and pack for the top supermarkets. In the pandemic, sales in this sector are 20% up but over the longer term sales are slowly declining and statistics show that younger customers are falling away.
Other carbohydrates are gaining ground and meat and two veg option is far from the dominant choice today. The charts below are from 2018 show that our fresh market sector is only about a third of all potato sales
Trends to vegetarianism and vegan do not seem to be helping. I looked at a vegan frozen meal website recently and out of thirty dishes only one contained potatoes and that was fifty fifty with sweet potato. This adds insult to injury, as we do not have the temperatures required to grow sweet potatoes in the UK.
I discovered an utensil called a ricer in Sweden some years ago and I thought that had potential to revitalise the potato market only to find most people already knew of it and it is commonly used on the way to mashed potato. Creativity is badly needed and whilst my idea is hardly creative I think it warrants consideration.
Bubble and Squeak is one of the Great Dishes of the World and it can be vegan, with versatile ingredients and if you make a double helping of mash on day one, a quick and delicious standalone supper on another day. It is quintessentially British and would work well prepared and chilled and probably frozen too. Perhaps the creativity will be needed in selling it to millennials!