CU LTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Potato delivery to hospitals thanks to fertile soil Potato grower Arnold van Woerkom embraced the N-xt basic principles 16 years ago and achieved results. The icing on the cake is the recent delivery of his own, very healthy W16 potatoes to various hospitals in the Netherlands in immaculately-white bags. The company N-xt Fertilizers in the town of Emmen has already been active on Dutch soil for almost 20 years now. It started as a franchisee of an originally-American concept, but has now been working independently for 6 years already. As far as fertilisation is concerned, the company has its very own strategy which is, in fact, based on the vision of ‘better growing results and healthier food production start with a fertile soil’. A potato grower who has embraced these N-xt basic principles for the past 16 years, is Arnold van Woerkom. The icing on the cake is the recent delivery of his own W16 potatoes to various hospitals in the Netherlands. The main reason is that they contain 30 percent more minerals. Van Woerkom and Technical Director Marco van Gurp of N-xt Fertilizers explain the how and why. It’s been over 16 years now since potato grower Van Woerkom radically changed the fertilisation strategy on his crop farm. In the preceding years, the government had introduced a policy to curb the excessive use of fertiliser. ‘I thought that they were quite right. During those earlier years, we were mainly concerned with the aim of ‘making sure there’s enough on it’, and not: ‘what exactly does that potato plant need?’ During his search for the proper fertilisation strategy, Van Woerkom met Marco van Gurp of N-xt Fertilizers at an agricultural meeting. ‘Marco told me that, for fertilisation, he wasn’t looking at the potato plant but at the soil. This was exactly what I’d been looking for. I’d already had that idea myself that it wasn’t right to apply salts like calcium ammonium nitrate so excessively. Salt isn’t only a plant nutrient but also a preserving agent. By adding salt to foodstuffs they keep for much longer. Salt stops the development of fungi and bacteria, that’s what people already knew in the old days. In the soil it works exactly the same: too much salt kills and/or slows down the growth of soil organisms, both the good and the bad. And you must avoid that.’ According to Van Woerkom and Van Gurp, the theory is quite simple. If the chemical mineral balance in the soil is optimal, the structure and biology are also optimal and the plant grows well. With this, you ultimately harvest healthy products that contain a wide range of minerals that both man Potato World 2017 • number 2 41 Pagina 40
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