TRADE AND MARKETING China wants to secure its food supply with potatoes variety – and so it must have signed the UPOV protocol (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) for “Plant Breeders’ Rights”. This doesn’t mean that you’re then safe. But are we actually safe in Europe, where illegal multiplication is also still rife? Our driving force is growth. Look, you can continue to operate in an over full European market, which is turning into a real red ocean, if you ask me. Or you could also opt for countries such as India and China, which are more of a blue ocean. We prefer to be the first to go and develop activities in countries that really want our varieties. Naturally, developing activities in those new areas involves considerable uncertainties. You still need to discover everything. You slowly pave the way for the entire sector if you try to be the first. This also involves time and costs, but it does give us a headstart in this market. We’re making deliberate choices as to how we want to present ourselves in such a new market. You can opt for an agency, your own company or a joint venture and we examine this for each country. In China, we want to have our own company and not only depend on licence fees, but also share in the income from the trade in seed. But to do this we’ll need to invest a great deal of energy. Within five years, I foresee in China a market for professional potato growers of 750,000 tons. This represents a value of at least 300,000 million euros. This market will consist of growers who don’t mind paying for good quality, vigorous seed of the new varieties’, Verveld predicts. Using 3,500 kilograms of seed per hectare, on an estimated acreage of 220,000 hectares, the professional market is quite a bit smaller than the Chinese government has in mind. At the start of this year, it was announced that the government wants the total acreage to have doubled to 10 million hectares by 2020. The total market is therefore even bigger than Verveld outlined. Confidence applies to all markets To get new varieties registered is a road that needs patience, explains Verveld. ‘We already started mapping out the Chinese market in 2000. And it was only in 2008 that we went there with our own varieties. The Challenger, Taurus, Crisp4all, Janine, Evora, Lucinda and Voyager were the first varieties to be registered and are, in principle, approved for Plant Breeders’ Rights. We’re now waiting for the final confirmation, which has come to a standstill due to changes within the government. As soon as the approval has come in, we can register the varieties commercially. We’ll then still have to make a choice between national registration, whereby twelve varieties ‘As much as 50 percent subsidy is possible for purchasing mini tubers. This has resulted in an enormous increase in rapid multiplication stations’, Herman Verveld points out. 8 Potato World 2015 • number 2 Pagina 7
Pagina 9Voor uitgaven, online mailings en verenigingsbladen zie het Online Touch content management system systeem. Met de mogelijkheid voor een web winkel in uw uitgaves.
Potatoworld 2015/2 Lees publicatie 36Home