In Central and Western Europe, more and more profitable potato varieties are grown year after year, which increasingly lead to overproduction and drive prices down. In the last ten years, there have already been three campaigns with a very high surplus of potatoes and low producer prices.
The French producer organization UNPT, the Flemish group ABS and potato producers in Wallonia (FWA) have now set up an interregional project aimed at identifying alternatives for the sale of excess quantities.
In a first step, the project aims to support the opinion-forming process of potato growers by providing a forecast of significant excess quantities already at the beginning of each marketing period. In a second step, opportunities for sales in alternative usage directions and the conditions for it are to be offered.
The project focuses on different areas, such as utilization as feed, processing into potato starch, biogas or industrial composting. In the end, it is now important that enough farmers from the region participate in the project.
It started in January, is funded by Regional Economic Development Aid Fund and ends in early July 2019.
Text: HANSA Derivatives Trading GmbH / Source: agrodigital.com
