TRADE AND MARKETING Breeding pioneer Niek Vos pushes the boundaries ‘H is uphill fight and the innovative way he sells his products has gained high praise.’ With this typical description by jury forewoman Colinde de Nijs, Niek Vos was awarded the title of ‘Hero of Taste’ [Held van de Smaak] of the province of Flevoland. During the prize-giving ceremony, De Nijs particularly praised the breeder for his perseverance in developing a tasty Phythophthora-resistent variety, the deciding factor for awarding him this first prize. This is how Vos is known by many people, both in the world of breeding and organic farming and also outside these worlds. He’s often been portrayed with his typical hat by the various media and trade journals, posing between his pride and joy, organic potatoes. In the meantime, he is cleverly using his well-known image in his own logo which, together with the picture of his successor Michiel, features on the ‘Niek’s Witte’ bags. Illustrious ‘Witte’ That illustrious ‘Witte’, that’s what it’s all been about for years now in the potato sector of the organic crop farm. Although Vos can certainly talk with enthusiasm about the subject of his tasty white-skinned and strong Phytophthora-resistant organic potato, he is also down-to-earth because as he puts it: ‘The story has by no means come to an end yet.’ It’s a story that originated in 1987. That’s the year in which he completely changed over from conventional crop farming (70 hectares) to organic cultivation. ‘Years before that, I’d started growing seed potatoes of the Bintje variety. In the first couple of years, I only needed to spray against Phytophthora twice in a season, but after a few years, that had become at least seven times. This happened as a matter of course, but I didn’t think it was normal and I wasn’t happy about it. It took a long time for me to decide to change over to organic crop farming. Everyone told me that I was mad, like the open-sandals and woolly-socks brigade, you know. You were viewed as something strange. What was more difficult was that there wasn’t yet a market for organic produce. It took me seven years before I could take the plunge. It became increasingly problematic to continue with conventional farming, and the inner conviction that I didn’t want to depend on chemicals won in the end. Fortunately, the market for organic produce started to take off after that and is currently quite thriving. It’s still not easy, organic crop farming still requires a great deal of effort, especially where potatoes are concerned, but it gives immense enjoyment’, Vos laughs. Work with nature When he started, Vos knew very little about organic farming, but experience is the best teacher. For example, what he found out was that working with nature was more profitable than working against it. ‘A wisdom I didn’t have beforehand, but which I learned during the change over to an organic farm management system. Think about things such as greater and more sophisticated crop rotation, the use of animal manure, the cultivation of foliar crops to suppress weeds, and taking care of the soil. It’s not at all necessary to damage the soil. What I also learned over the years was that you don’t need chemicals to keep your crop healthy. Here, on the light soil, we definitely had problems with various nematode populations, which slowly started to cause yield losses in a number of crops, including seed potatoes. In those days, soil decontamination was the weapon to temporarily get rid of them. It was only after changing over to a 1:7 rotation scheme for organic potatoes that I eventually really got rid of the nematodes. This still surprises me and that applies to many more measures I take to keep my organic crops healthy.’ In that sense, Vos was a real pioneer. ‘We had to find out a lot ourselves and we’re still learning.’ Russian roulette That pioneering approach also applied to potato breeding. Gradually, the struggle against Phytophthora became the most serious challenge. ‘I quickly learned that you needed to have resistant varieties, otherwise you wouldn’t get anywhere with your crops. The organic cultivation of conventional varieties is nothing less than Russian roulette. We sometimes contracted ‘It’s my dream that, one day, all organic and conventional farmers will be able to gro 24 Potato World 2014 • number 3 Pagina 23

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