Potato cooperative Agrico last week announced to its members an average indication price of 25 euros per 100 kilos for seed potatoes from the 2020 harvest.
Last year, company paid a price of 30.21 euros per 100 kilos for all sizes and classes of seed potatoes from the 2019 harvest. The potato cooperative states that the corona pandemic in the current season will have a major impact on the sales of seed potatoes.
The situation was very bad in many of the important purchasing countries, Agrico reports. The seed potato company talks about disappearing infrastructures, limited availability of financial resources and, for some destinations, also limited availability of containers.
Algeria quota
Company fared well with early destinations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Good quantities of seed potatoes were sold here at high prices. In contrast, Asia and North Africa were significantly disappointing. Algeria, one of the largest buyers of Dutch seed potatoes, imposed a quota for a maximum of 50,000 tons of imported seed potatoes.
The situation in Europe was highly dependent on the country. In general, sales went well. According to Agrico, Spain was one of the negative exceptions to this. As a result of the corona pandemic, sales of the Agria variety have fallen sharply. There was a lot of demand for the Agrico varieties Fontane and Markies from the chips industry in Northwest Europe.
Agrico’s indication price concerns all delivered tons of class S to class A seed potatoes from 28 millimeters upwards. That includes the top sizes and includes a grower’s license upon delivery from the farm in the fall. For monopoly varieties, an average of approximately 1.70 euros per 100 kilos of license is withheld.
‘Done everything’
In a response, General Manager Jan van Hoogen of Agrico acknowledges that the seed potato price is lower than in previous seasons, when record prices were paid. ‘Given the current market situation, we at company have done everything we can to get out what was possible for our members.’
