A strange story involving the environmental impact of recent warm temperatures across Europe involves the European potato crop harvested over the past two months. Due to the unusual warm weather affecting Northern Europe in particular, some the stores of recently harvested potatoes kept in ambient storage facilities have started to age and go rotten months earlier than they should.
Worse case scenario is that come next spring there could be a shortage of processing and chipping potatoes. It must be stressed that supplies to supermarkets are unlikely to be affected due to the potatoes destined for multiples usually being kept in high tech refrigerated cold stores.
Ambient stores rely on outside temperatures to circulate the air and usually cooler external air is used at night to cool the potatoes down; once harvested the temperature in the store is cooled using outside 'cooler 'air and this usually means that potatoes can sometimes be stored for a further 6 to 8 months if required.
Warm temperatures, day and night mean that this was difficult to achieve across Northern Europe with Holland, Belgium and France all being heavily affected, the first two Countries are large suppliers to the processing and chipping industries. The problem has also reached some stores in the United Kingdom and Germany and comes on the back of less potato area being grown across Europe as a whole this year.
The UK processing and chip shop market could also be affected further as it usually imports cheaper processing potatoes from the Continent at certain times when crops become more difficult to source at home. Again this depends on demand and stocks of finished product combined with the amount of contract cover that has been taken for this potato season.
The reductions in potatoes grown across Europe as a whole were attributed to changes in peoples eating habits and a push for healthier eating, although potatoes are actually healthy. Area grown being reduced has also been affected by single farm payment subsidies, which were implemented across Europe for this past growing season and meant that there was less land available to rent and grow potatoes on. Another two important factors are that yields of the crop this year across Europe was lower than usual and last but not least that fact that farmers are simply growing less as they simply cannot make any money.
Some potatoes destined for use over the next few months have to be used now by processors otherwise they will simply be no use for anything.
As far as an affect on the market and prices are concerned; currently with these problem stores being used the processing demand is poor for free market potatoes and prices although firm remain relatively static. Prices can also be expected to fall slightly in the coming weeks as these poorer quality stores are moved into the market.
However, come next spring, with a large volume of potatoes already gone, the market could indeed get lively and prices for processing and chipping potatoes could increase should demand from the processing sector and chip shop trade increase. Indeed UK farmers are speculating that this potato season could see exports from them across to the Continent, instead of the usual influx of cheaper European potato supplies.
