Potato crops need irrigation to avoid failure

POTATO growers who aren’t able to irrigate their crops could be facing a crisis situation if it doesn’t rain in the next fortnight, IFA Potato Committee vice-chair Nora Sheehan has warned.

The north Cork potato and tillage farmer said that while she and her husband Connie have access to irrigation facilities that will hopefully salvage their crop, she said it is a worrying time for farmers who don’t.

“We are irrigating at the moment. Anybody who can irrigate is lucky but if you can’t there could be a crisis situation and it will have a huge impact on the end result for potato crops,” she said.

“We could be facing a crop failure in places where irrigation isn’t possible. It’s critical at the moment and over the next few weeks for crops because if they don’t get moisture, yield will inevitably be lower.”

Forecast

Ms Sheehan added that since the majority of potato farmers haven’t experienced conditions like this before, it is difficult to determine the outcome of the situation.

“We’ve never experienced this in our lifetime. Farmers don’t remember a year as bad as this. We’re watching the forecast every day and we’re sometimes promised a little drop of rain but it never comes,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do, we can’t control the weather. There’s an 80pc moisture deficit. It’s not the case of a little drop of rain solving this.”

With less potato yield likely, Ms Sheehan hopes that a price increase will be the one positive outcome of the drought.

“I hope the price will be good and that it brings up the price and that people continue to buy potatoes. We need to keep the price up because farmers won’t be sustainable if yield is low and there is a crop failure.”