CU LTIVATION AND TECHNIQU E Everything is about flexibility in a modern seed potato business In order to place the five thousand boxes within a short period of time, Smits Cropping had a big, new storehouse constructed with in total three big storerooms provided with modern ventilation technology and mechanical cooling. Times are changing. As an entrepreneur, you regularly have to make a choice: change or continue as before. And this is also true when you cultivate seed potatoes, is the experience of Jac Smits from the village of Luttelgeest. New varieties make their entry, whether you like it or not, and new, modern buildings and mechanisation follow. O f the three cousins working at the crop farm in a partnership - the other two are Bas and Thijs - Jac Smits is the one responsible for the seed potato farm on Lindeweg in Luttelgeest. He would have loved to grow the Bintje variety for many years to come. ‘They were always easy to grow, ideal on the light sandyloam soil around Luttelgeest and easy in storage’, Smits sums up the advantages a bit sadly. The best-sold variety in the 28/35 mm sizes. ‘When you had a lot of them, you earned a lot, provided the price was good as well, of course. Sadly, the variety can no longer compete financially with the newcomers that have arrived on the market in recent years’, he explains the reason for its disappearance from their cropping plan. At Smits Cropping, the white chalk letters of the old variety have gone from the black plates on the cubic-metre boxes. They now show names such as Agria, Markies, Fontane, Colombo, Sifra, Challenger and others. Seed potato experts will recognise the varieties as coming from two trading companies: Agrico and HZPC. ‘They each have half of our acreage. How much is that? We have five thousand cubic-metre boxes in storage here, so you can do you own sums’, Smits answers cryptically. Starting from an average seed potato yield, that’s well over 100 hectares, it’s easy to calculate. These ample fields produce a total of twelve different varieties every year, most of which are in the high-quality S and SE categories. More early varieties As they tell us, this is no longer as easy as during the Bintje period. ‘Each variety requires its own cultivation and storage methods which means we’re racking our brains again every season’, Smits tells us. ‘The problems we have here are the differences in soil type, and sometimes also potato cyst nematodes, so where to plant Potato World 2016 • number 2 41 Pagina 40
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