Potatoes and crisps rising in price as late sowing leads to shortage

A potential potato shortage is looming, with growers months behind schedule due to adverse weather conditions over the past few months and consumers are being warned of price rises for potatoes and crisps.

Agriculture Minister Charlie Mcconalogue committed €100/ha to all farmers last week who plant field crops and vegetables this year.

“There’s a shortage — there’s a challenge there,” said Mr Mcconalogue, when asked on RTÉ if consumers could expect to pay more for potatoes this year.

“I want to make sure that we have potatoes in this country and I wish potato farmers well as they get into the fields over the next couple of weeks.

“There’s still a window available. The forecast for the next two weeks seems to be improving, but farmers’ confidence is really dented.

“I want to give them the confidence to go ahead and plant this year because we need our tillage sector to be strong and we need to see those crops.”

One of the country’s major potato farms, Meade Farm in Meath, is way behind schedule, having planted no crops up to last week.

Hard

“We haven’t planted any potatoes this year,” said Daniel Williams, Farm Manager at Meade Farm. “It’s going to be fairly hard going forward — we’re two months behind.

“Our early potatoes would have been planted weeks ago at this stage — they’re all still in store and that’s going to have a knock-on effect later in the year.

“We’d usually be harvesting in July, but this year, it’ll be pushed out to at least late August at this stage. For most farmers this year, you could have had anywhere up to 30pc of crops that were not harvested last year, which led to a shortage then.

“Now, without your early planters this year, you’re going to be another 10-15pc short on your early crops.

“It’s getting smaller and smaller each year. We need to increase the acreage of potatoes, but that’s unlikely because feed and land is very tight at this moment and we’re still competing with all your dairy farmers.

“The weather is unpredictable — you get a good day and then it rains again.

“It’s going to take a long time to dry out now. We’re still seeing prolonged periods of wet weather, the water gets soaked into the land rather than running off and that sets us back for another week as well. The farmers are going to be very busy when we get planting — it’s very little time to do a lot of work.

“It’s going to be a busy year, and with it getting harder and harder to find staff, it makes it even more frustrating.”

Shortage

The price of crisps may increase in light of the shortage, according to Tom Keogh, Chief Executive of Keogh’s Crisps.

“It’s extremely tough. Every year, Mother Nature throws the dice and you just have to play the cards you’ve been given,” Keogh told LMFM Radio.

“We are coming off the back of a bad season and we have all been praying for an early spring to plant, but that didn’t happen. We are facing real shortages right across Europe and the price of potatoes and any potato product has gone up on the shelves.”