CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Ukrainian potato cultivation p By investing heavily in new varieties, cultivation methods and storage, the Ukrainian potato sector wants to professionalise further, as we witnessed during the most recent harvesting period. This is necessary to meet the growing demand, observed Jan Willem Sepers of the Agroplant seed potato trading company and his local agent, Valery Lashinsky. T he famous black soil of the Ukraine, the Chornozem, is dry as dust. The enormous dust cloud, in an equally-imposing potato field, betrays the aridity of the land. As the cumulus approaches, however, we discover a two-row Grimme SE 15060 behind a massive John Deere and a bunker of Carrera full to the brim with potatoes. The time is the beginning of August and the thermometer points to 40 degrees Celsius. This is not an unusual temperature in the Ukraine but, this year; the month of July was also extremely hot. The result was that the potatoes ripened more quickly than normally. Dmitriy Zichenko of IMC-agro from Chernihiv, which is a stone’s throw away from Kiev, says that he lifted his potatoes two weeks earlier than usual. Nevertheless, the yield in the Carreras looks great. IMC-agro is one of the companies in the Ukraine that has invested enormously in the cultivation of potatoes in recent years. Grow seed separately This year, Zichenko is growing potatoes at IMC-agro for the third year running. The total acreage has increased to no less than 980 hectares. This did not happen without considerable effort. He says he has discovered that potatoes are a crop that needs a lot of know-how and capital, which is why IMC-agro has elected to grow step-by-step. With a total of four Grimme lifters, the company has ample scope to harvest its fields. Last year, IMC-agro invested in a storage facility, for which the Ukrainians asked the Dutch company Agrovent to fit out the existing storerooms with ventilation systems. They are partly fitted out with outdoor ventilation and partly with mechanical cooling. Zichenko stores his seed potatoes in the cold storeroom. In total, approximately 12,500 tons of potatoes can currently be stored here now. Meanwhile, he has also learned that if you grow seed yourself, it’s better to do that on a separate plot the reason being that, in the hot Ukrainian climate, your potatoes are quick to contract a virus. Invest in irrigation The growing season in the region where Zichenko works, starts at the end of April when the frost period is over. Planting takes about a month and that means that the last seed is planted by the end of May. Normally, harvesting starts in mid-August, but this year it was a fortnight earlier. IMCagro doesn’t yet have the facilities to irrigate; if they had they could definitely have stretched the growing season a bit this year. Within about four years, however, he wants to have the majority of the potatoes under irrigation. This will make cultivation more expensive of course. Zichenko has calculated that the cultivation of potatoes will then cost him approximately 9 eurocents per kilogram. Yet he hopes to earn more per hectare than the other crops on his farm. Along with potatoes, he also grows 12,500 hectares of maize and 4,500 hectares of sunflowers. 12 Potato World 2012 • number 4 Pagina 11
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