CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY English grower goes Dutch In North Yorkshire (England), Stuart Tweddle grows 36 hectares of crisp potatoes of the Saturna variety. Last year, he invested in a new storehouse, switching over from the English system that uses little air to the Dutch system that uses 100 cubic metres of air per cubic metre of potatoes. He also invested heavily in a complete range of heating elements. ‘These heating elements really made my product dry this year’, a relieved Tweddle tells us. n his typically-British farming outfit, Stuart Tweddle proudly shows us his new storehouse. ‘There are currently a few more potatoes in the store than the 1300 tons it was built for. Because of the solid concrete construction of the building, we were able to store over 10 percent extra harvest without any problem. What we noticed the moment we entered the store was the big humidifier. ‘Yes, you don’t see that a lot in England’, he says smiling. Good-humouredly, he goes up the steep stairs to the floor where internal and external air is mixed. Here, in front of each unit, there are four propane gas heaters to heat the air if this should be necessary. After going up another stair, we finally see the enormous heap of potatoes. ‘You can see that the rotten potatoes are drying up nicely’, says Omnivent Area Manager Paul Kok, pointing to a few greywhite potatoes. I Using a mix of air Omnivent sold the Dutch storage system to Tweddle in 2010. ‘In 2009, we decided to make Great Britain one of our spearhead countries’, Kok explains. ‘We’d not been active in Britain before that time. A bit strange maybe, as Great Britain has a similar climate to the Netherlands and the country is just round the corner. However, the differences are enormous. For example, the English only use half the number of cubic metres of air as compared to the Dutch. And the narrow ventilator tubes, which resemble thick drainage pipes, are an invitation for trouble, we think. The funny thing is that you see them more and more in bulk storage units. After a pioneering period of over a year, together with local construction company S&A, we built a storehouse for potato grower Tweddle with purely Dutch storage technology. Apart from bigger ventilators that Dutch know-how in British storehouse. Potato World 2012 • number 2 35 Pagina 34
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