CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Stammen’s quality table potatoes all year round Even after the installation, Heinz Stammen (l) regularly confers with Mooij’s Hans van den Oever. Worried about the market ‘The quality is good, the price is not, unfortunately.’ The laugh now changes into a worried look. Yes, the potato specialist is very worried about the market. The thing is, it is customary in Bright light gives a clear idea of the condition of the potatoes. Germany to grow table potatoes freely and he has also opted for that system. There are, of course, agreements about buying, but prices are the current market prices. And they didn’t have a very good start this year, says the potato man cautiously. Stammen observes that there is a lot of fiddling with cheap, less-qualitative products. Only a good quality potato offered from storage in March/April can have a positive effect on the price, he thinks. But until that happens, Stammen takes a gloomy view. The situation is now even more tough as he has just invested the equivalent of 5 eurocents per kilo of potatoes in storage costs. If you add this to the costs of cultivation of 8 eurocents per kilo, and assuming that he will have a yield of 60 tons per hectare, in his calculation, the potato price has to reach at least 13 cents if only to cover his costs. And he may have to deal with extra costs as well. For example, Stammen has to pay for all the potatoes that are rotting away in the supermarkets. That will show as tare on his final settlement. This is especially problematic in the early potato season. By first keeping the potatoes one night in the mechanical cooling, the problem of the open lenticels can be largely prevented, since the cooling closes them, which limits the access for all kinds of diseases. As far as his quality is concerned, Stammen thinks that he is well thought of by his buyers. ‘If you deliver what you say you’ll deliver, you automatically build a good business relationship ‘, he says matter-of-factly. 24 Potato World 2012 • number 1 Pagina 23
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