Exciting early table potato crop in Florida TRADE AND MARKETING CUP PLANTING TECHNIQUE WORKS FASTER AND MORE ACCURATELY An hour south of Danny Johns’ farm, Bula Farms from the northern state of Wisconsin is busy planting 200 hectares of Atlantic for the crisps industry. This farm business grows a total of 1,600 hectares of potatoes in the southern state of Florida and more to the north in Illinois, and seed in Wisconsin. ‘This means that you can spread the marketing’, says Technical Manager Pat Briccol. What is immediately noticeable in the field is that the row distance is quite a bit smaller than at Johns’ farm. ‘We plant at 36 inches (91.4 centimetres), which means there are eighteen rows between the discharge channels.’ At Johns’ there are only sixteen rows between the channels. Briccol plants with a 6-row Miedema CP cup planter. The manufacturer from the Dutch province of Friesland has already sold 25 machines in America in recent years. Briccol explains that the cup planter is faster and more accurate than the American planting machines. Because the Americans cut their seed, not every piece of seed is the same. The result is that the machine sometimes drops double pieces and sometimes misses altogether. ‘As more and more European varieties are grown in America, for those varieties I’d suggest planting the entire tuber like they do in Europe or else only cut a tuber in half’, Guido Mangnus, Miedema’s Global Marketing Director tells Evert 16th row has such a watercourse. ‘This ensures the fast and easy flow of water and prevents rot problems’, he says. Gearing to market opportunities Although Florida is known for its spring crops, Johns also started 35 hectares of winter crops two years ago. Planting for this crop starts at the end of September and lasts until the beginning of October. As Florida sometimes has severe frost in winter, this is quite a risky crop. Last year, they had a long period of frost already at the beginning of November. Johns: ‘It’s important that you act quickly. When the plants have already emerged, you have to earth them up again immediately. The plants are then protected by the soil. When the frost is gone, we scrape the soil of the ridges away again. This really looks awful at the beginning, but all is well after two weeks. Compared to the plants caught by frost, this crop has developed much better’, Johns explains. If he is successful, he will already be able to supply his customers with fresh, locallygrown potatoes from Christmas onward. Preparations for the spring crop are also started at the beginning of January, when he plants the potatoes in the pre-prepared ridges. Harvesting starts at the end of April and continues until the blazing heat strikes at the beginning of June. As soon as a crop has firm skin, he lifts the potatoes and delivers them to the supermarket, washed and in the desired packaging. To maintain soil fertility, Johns chooses to grow the fast-growing Sorghum grass in the warm summer. It adds a lot of organic matter to the soil and improves the structure of the plots. This is necessary, because the potatoes are grown on the same plot every year. us. ‘If you only look at the distribution of the stems in the plot, you should be able to get a much higher yield that way.’ The harvest of these early-planted potatoes yields 8 percent higher than the main harvest. The basic price of the crisp potatoes is 10 euros per 100 kilograms and the early potatoes are around one euro more. This 1:1 cultivation means that serious nematode treatment is necessary. After harvesting, the soil is disinfected with Telone (dichlorpropene), a chemical that has been forbidden in open cultivation in Europe since 20 March 2008. When planting he also adds Mocap in the rows. New technologies should be explained. Looking towards the future, Johns sees many ongoing good developments. Among other things, he’s thinking of chips manufacturer Simplot’s Innate programme, which has put extra resistances and quality criteria into potatoes with the help of GMO. ‘This and other new technologies need to be properly explained to the consumer before we start using it. This is a serious debate that needs to be held by supporters and opponents everywhere in America. And we, as growers, must also take part in the discussion by explaining to our people what we’re doing. It’s something I see very clearly again when we’ve had a group of children lifting their own potatoes. This is an experience they never forget for their entire lives. It’s the basis for buying potatoes for their own children, later on’, Danny Johns explains. ● Jaap Delleman Potato World 2015 • number 4 31 Pagina 30

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