“Potato for professionals – only quality guarantees profit in difficult conditions” – this is the slogan under which the online training organized by Procam Polska took place. During the event, the production technology was discussed with an emphasis on protection using the latest solutions.
The event was to summarize the 2020 season, as well as to present the best storage solutions that worked well during the past vegetation. During the online broadcast, the host of the meeting, Patrycja Kapral and Michał Dąbrowski, talked with representatives from the processing industry and the producers themselves.
The first speaker was Jarosław Wańkowicz, Director of Raw Material Management at Farm Frites. Due to the record yielding of potatoes in the 2020 season, and thus – low raw material prices, while the sales market shrinks due to the restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic (closed gastronomy and hotel industry), everyone wonders what are the prospects for the potato market in the coming season and what to do to ensure the profitability of production.
According to Jarosław Wańkowicz, “the coming year actually poses great challenges in terms of market price fluctuations, and thus leaves suppliers, i.e. farmers, in great uncertainty.” Wańkowicz, however, sees an opportunity to secure income. – I would look for stability, repeatability and price guarantees – not necessarily the highest,
The past year has also brought a lot of changes related to the storage of potatoes, because the European Commission decided to ban the use of agents containing chlorpropham, which is mainly used to stop germination in storage facilities. How did Farm Frites handle it? – Withdrawal of the active substance of chlorpropham in the entire European Union means that we are forced to introduce other, alternative solutions.
They are more expensive than the good old chlorpropham. The situation is that most of the warehouses can be adapted to the new type of gassing – it is enough to clean them well, seal them well and you can store potatoes with very good results even until June or July of the following year – says Jarosław Wańkowicz, Raw Material Management Director at Farm Frites.
And how did the potato production on farms look like last season? What was the biggest problem? We learned the answers to these questions in an interview with Krzysztof Brodziński – the manager of the “Polish Garden of Vegetables”, which deals with the production of potatoes for seed potatoes. smiles Krzysztof Brodziński “We also had a problem with potato blight, maybe not as big as last year, but still. In the second part of the season, due to changing weather conditions, the main disease was alternaria,” he adds.
As you know, potato seed material must be of high quality. How to achieve it? – We perform 5-7 fungicide treatments, depending on the length of the growing season – explains the manager. The production technology of reproductive material also includes intensive foliar fertilization. – We do not care about high yields, but very uniform tuber quality – explains Brodziński.
Did the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic somehow affect the “Polish Vegetable Garden”? – A little for sure. Despite the high quality of the raw material, the market slowed down anyway and we all felt it – finished Krzysztof Brodziński.
