TRADE AND MARKETING Exciting early table potato crop in Florida building with a For Sale sign in the garden. The acreage has shrunk to 9,000 hectares. Cost price of 9,500 euros Applying granulate and fluid fertiliser during planting in the sandy soil. Europe. Furthermore, he sells a lot under his own label Blue Sky farms, but the lion’s share is sold under the store brand of most local supermarkets such as Publix, Walmart and Costco. Reflecting demands in the price ‘Naturally, care for food safety is also part of modern potato growing’, is Johns opinion. What he finds difficult, though, is that the extra investments in traceability are not recouped in the products. And this is something that must happen, he feels. Many smaller companies in America are not able to satisfy the increasingly stricter demands of the customers. This also applies to the region in which Johns’ farm is situated. In the nineteen seventies, there was still over 12,000 hectares of potatoes here. The railway station in Hastings was then an important link between Florida and the rest of America. Today, the little town is run down and the once-beautiful house that accommodated the producers’ association is now a dilapidated If Johns, as a fourth generation traditional potato grower, wants to continue growing, he will now have to invest a great deal. He calculates that one hectare of potatoes needs an annual investment of at least 9,500 euros. For an average yield of 34 tons, the cost price per hectare is then 28 euro cents a kilogram. That’s extremely high by both American and European standards. In the old days, Johns mainly cultivated potatoes for the crisps industry, but that was no longer economically feasible. Nowadays, he focuses entirely on the cultivation of table potatoes. In Florida, at the beginning of February of this year, the price for one kilogram of table potatoes, packaged in boxes, varied from 80 euro cents to 1.5 euros. Growers such as Johns, who can do their own packaging and can deliver good quality potatoes very early in the year, can get a very good price for the earliest crop. In 2013, the average growers’ price for potatoes was 38 euro cents per kilogram. Irrigation is one of the biggest cost items. To reduce the use of water, Johns has invested in a new system. Where many growers in Florida flood their land to get sufficient water into the soil, Johns goes for a different system. He installed a system in his potato plots whereby, every three metres, a pipe was dug in at a depth of 1 metre which produces water. By turning on the water supply, water comes up. The soil is like sea sand and can easily draw up the water through its capillary action. His yield has risen by 12 to 13 percent as a result of this meticulous way of watering. Water is both Johns’ enemy and friend. ‘We need water for the crop to grow in dry periods, but we also regularly have far too much rain. That’s when we need to get rid of the water. In order to do that we dig trenches across the ridges to transport the water to a central channel.’ This channel is a blind row. Hydraulic disc digs the discharge channel. 30 Potato World 2015 • number 4 Pagina 29

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