FROM THE FORUM

Potato Forum chairman

The dust has settled just a little more, but we are still no closer to knowing what comes next, now AHDB Potatoes is fi rmly in wind-down mode. It will have an impact on how our sector operates, so I make no apology for returning to the subject.

The length of time it’s taking Defra to come to a decision is simply not good enough. As growers, and in conjunction with our supply chains, we can make plans to pick up areas of work that we need, but we can’t do that until we know what we will be missing: there is too much speculation, second guessing and risk of duplication.

The Potato Forum has considered which areas may still require a collaborative approach. One is crisis management: having an authoritative and independent voice in the event of a challenge to our industry. It requires a grasp of hard evidence to refute sensational claims, and judgment on when it’s best to respond and when it’s best to let a media story die out. Done well, it is barely noticed, but if it fails we will all suff er from it.

Linked to this is the co-ordination of a response to emerging threats to our crop, primarily pests or diseases novel to the UK. When action is needed in these situations, it’s needed fast, and in a way that may need cross-industry support.

The third is around applications for emergency approval of active ingredients for crop protection – but only where the manufacturer or supplier can’t reasonably be expected to obtain it themselves. This might apply, for example, where a number of generic products contain the same active; or where the potential market simply can’t justify the cost of navigating our overly-complex approvals system.

One way to deliver these functions might be the creation of one or more crop associations for the potato industry, to put growers and their supply chains – not Defra – in control. Defra has said it will respect the ballot result, which is only right and proper. But we know the ballot is not binding on them, so it’s unlikely their decision will be black and white. We urgently need to know: what will we be doing collaboratively and what will we be doing independently? Will ministers cut the strings entirely, or will they still hold us by a somewhat frayed thread? The time to let us know is now.

Potato Forum member since May

It was the NFU’s Next Generation Forum – which I’ve been a member of for three years – that led me to put my name forward for the Potato Forum.

For those who haven’t come across ‘Next Gen’ it does a lot of work on skills, training and making sure the views of the younger generation of farmers and growers feed into policy developments. Now, I hope I’m able to bring a diff erent perspective to the Potato Forum, where I’ll be its West Midlands voice as Robert Lockhart is stepping down.

My brother James and I took over the family farm near Newport, Shropshire, in 2010, when I was just 21 and two years into my course at Harper Adams. Much of the farm was being managed by a contractor so taking over meant, among other things, that we needed to raise signifi cant investment as we had little in the way of machinery – just one tractor, for example.

We farm 410ha in total of which we own 56. We grow 160ha of potatoes, all for processing, and we planted four varieties in 2021. We also farm wheat, oilseed rape, spring oats and, for the fi rst time this year, soya. We have 114,000 broiler chickens, too.

The large proportion of rented land means we have a mix of soils. We irrigate about 60% of the potato crop; we would do more but it’s impossible to get land into licence, even though Shropshire sits on a huge aquifer.

One of the fi rst decisions was to expand our potato business and a self-propelled harvester has made a massive diff erence; it means we’re being off ered more potato ground because the machinery makes less mess.

There seems to be a widespread misconception among arable farmers that potatoes are the enemy of soil structure. This is one issue where I’d really like to help the Potato Forum set the record straight.

The reality is that none of us can get away with damaging our soils. Yes, there are areas here where potato land does need the plough, but everywhere else you can build them well into a reduced-till rotation.

Another is tuber quality, particularly internals. I don’t think AHDB paid that nearly enough attention. We need to be seeing 99% of the crop going through processing. Waste costs huge amounts of money, so we must work across the supply chain to raise quality and cut waste.