TRADE AND MARKET I NG Plantera pays better for its desired seed potato sizes When you started Plantera, your focus was on table potatoes. Recently, you also added French fries to that. Why? ‘At the start of our business we did indeed license the table potato segment of KWS Potato and we acquired the rest in December last year. Originally it was our plan to grow only seed potatoes and to develop varieties. Our first year, however, was a very bad trading year. In the spring of 2015, the first-early market picked up and we imported the first-earlies of our varieties, such as Inova. This has enabled us to compensate for a part of the loss of the seed potato pool. I also found that you can market your own varieties in this way too, by organising re-export. You should also bear in mind that the market for table potatoes has become a specialist market. A real niche market that is under pressure. In this segment, we stand out with a wide range of varieties, from firm to specialties such as baby potatoes. We’ll be growing 20 hectares of seed of the Lucera baby-potato variety next year, which will yield more than 1,000 tons of seed potatoes for marketing. In order to expand our market, we’ve also started to look at other segments. As a small company, we can afFord to market a wide range while focusing a lot of attention on each variety. A variety grown on 50 hectares is already a good quantity for us. The breeders of non-protected varieties also know that. If the breeders entrust us with their seedlings, we can do something with them in the market. A striking example is a starch variety under number with high resistances, which the breeder is crazy about. We’ve now ordered 25,000 mini tubers, because a good contact of ours wants to start growing a new starch variety. For us, a major customer in Scandinavia is an excellent start for a variety. This means we can grow step by step. Another example is the organic Vitabella variety. In the first year, these were difficult to grow, because of health problems. In young varieties, you often see that the seed is not quite what it should be in the first stage. That’s understandable, the variety is already 10 to 12 years old and the available seed is also older. You’re often just too late with rejuvenating the planting stock. That’s why it’s important to put a lot of energy into the pre-basic seed potatoes of new varieties. Sending off a trial shipment of a new variety in the seedling stage is too risky because it can contain viruses and bacteria, which influences the results. Vitabella has a nice skin and then you just know that the variety is vulnerable to bacteria. You have to watch out for that, both during cultivation and in sales. Fortunately, our Vitabella variety is now healthy and represents 20 percent of our seed potato sales.’ How does the Bafana variety fit in with this way of working? ‘Two years after the acquisition of KWS Potato, Stet Holland stopped with the cultivation of Bafana. Given our contract with KWS, we had the opportunity to pick up the variety. If you look at the acreages, this may seem a strange decision. From 2008 to 2017, the variety first increased to 90 hectares and then fell back to 12 hectares. For next year, however, we’ve already scheduled 35 hectares. During the entire period, we once had 1 hectare and once 15 hectares rejected due to bacteria. Not so bad, really. Especially when you consider that the variety’s prone to bacterial infection. If you look at the crossing parents Victoria x Felsina, there’s a bacterial susceptibility on both sides, with the Agria and Morena varieties as grandparents. I think that it’s important to share the weakness of a variety with the growers and the buyers. Then you should do everything possible to identify that variety characteristic. That doesn’t seem like a good advertisement. How are you going to deal with this sustainably in cultivation? ‘Our seed potato sector is designed nowadays so that seed potato growers grow their tubers as big as possible, because the most expensive tubers are the biggest ones. This means that many growers allow their seed potatoes to grow for as long as possible. Moreover, the late harvest, often only in October, increases the risk of an autumn bacterial brasiliensis infection. I believe that the seed potatoes should have been lifted before the seed onion harvest. Killing haulm by the beginning of August also offers the potato chain lots of advantages. First of all, the grower supplies more basic material in the right size. In addition, there’s no damage caused by brasiliensis. This means that you also have six weeks older seed in the spring. In concrete terms, it means that we have to limit the nitrogen dose, but we need to apply extra calcium to improve the skin quality. So growers will ultimately harvest fewer kilos. What is the farmer’s profit model then? ‘We’re going to pay a better price for the desired seed potato sizes, in order to reward the growers for better quality seed. The table shows the current prices per 100 kilograms. It’s striking that, so far, the biggest tubers have received the highest price per tuber, whereas these aren’t wanted in the seed potato trade. By paying more for the smaller seed sizes, the grower will harvest those sizes, which will improve the final total. After all, he’ll harvest fewer kilos from a hectare. As a result, the lead seal rates and other kilo-driven costs will decrease. In addition, we want to encourage growers to further increase the ‘By paying more for the smaller seed sizes, the grower will harvest those sizes’, Gerard Bovée explains. 6 Potato World 2018 • number 3 Pagina 5
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