A crisis meeting organised by the Scottish potato industry earlier this month failed to reach a consensus on action which the sector could take to improve its fortunes.
Organised by the Potato Council and NFU Scotland, it had been hoped that the meeting could find a way to reverse declining consumption, which has been blamed as one of the factors responsible for the low prices seen by growers this year. However, calls by growers for the levy body to invest more on promotion were said to be overly simplistic.
While the Potato Council confirmed that it increasing its budget for research and innovation, as well as bidding for European funding to help promote the health benefits of potatoes in the diet, NFU Scotland president Allan Bowie suggested that this would not help growers in the short term.
Potato grower Ken Lang from Cupar in Fife commented; “I think a lot of growers are at the stage where we need to chuck all of the money that is available into getting people to start looking at potatoes again.”
However, Dr Philip Burgess, head of the Potato Council’s communications and knowledge transfer team pointed out that not all growers shared this view, with those supplying the processing sector wanting money spent on increasing efficiency to compete against overseas producers.