CU LTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY India is on the threshold of large-scale potato mechanisation potato acreage after China. We’re paying a visit to two growers/traders. They are Sukhjit Singh Bhatti, who grows 1,000 hectares of seed potatoes of his own in Jalandhar and 200 hectares under contract with his son Varunjit Singh Bhatti and daughter-in-law Anoop Bhatti, and the other farmer/trader is Jang Bahadur Singh Sangha who grows 2,000 hectares of his own seed in the same place. A lot of manual work The manual grading process doesn’t always work very accurately, which is why the bigger growers are increasingly investing in grading machines. we’re working on an improved sustainability performance in India. In order to achieve this, we’ve drawn up a plan to supply the cities via professional distribution centres so that the quality in the chain can be improved and the percentage of waste reduced. This plan will help the government with safeguarding the food supply to the cities. In this country, where the population grows every year and urbanisation is increasing, food shortage is one of the government’s biggest fears. As I see it, hunger and food shortages are not a consequence of a shortage of food but of wrong distribution and wrong management in the food chain’, Smit explains. In order to carry out these plans, the inspired director has set up a collaborative venture in which he works closely together with the Dutch companies Salco, Verbruggen, VAM, Manter and Jongejans. ‘Besides in India, we can also market this idea in emerging economies such as South America, Africa and Russia, so we’ll be able to use our India-made machinery throughout the world,’ Smit explains his vision. A belt takes the potatoes in 50 kilogram bags up to the five stories in the often enormous warehouses where Indian growers store their potatoes. Potato chain is constantly changing In order to get a picture of the current potato chain’, we‘re visiting the Punjab area. The name Punjab means a basin of five rivers. This river area is a few hours’ drive to the northwest of Ambala. This is an area where mainly seed and table potatoes are cultivated. Potatoes for the processing industry are mostly grown in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha. McCain is a particularly big player in India. The specific cultivation of table potatoes also takes place in Uttar Pradesh. A flying visit shows a picture of cultivation and trade in this enormous country that’s constantly changing, and which currently has the second-biggest At this moment, the cultivation is mostly done by hand. In the Punjab, the growing season starts at the end of September, beginning of October and planting sometimes continues to mid-November. After a few preparations to make the soil suitable for potato growing, a simple machine makes furrows and adds artificial fertiliser. What follows is that the farm workers put the seed in the furrows by hand, after which a machine makes the ridges. During the harvest, the potatoes are spread out on a swath with a potato digger. After that, hordes of people follow to pick up the tubers and put them in bags. At the Bhatti farm, at least a thousand people are at work during harvesting. As an attractive, unblemished skin is an important quality characteristic of seed potatoes, lifting by hand is in itself good for the preservation of the quality. Especially in view of the fact that potatoes are stored for six months at a temperature of 3o Celsius, Due to increased wages – the daily earnings have risen fr growers are looking for other solutions in cultivation and l 20 Potato World 2017 • number 1 Pagina 19
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