Allotment owners accused of wrecking UK potato crop

GARDENERS and ‘allotment amateurs’ have been accused of fuelling a national potato shortage by spreading a devastating fungal blight.

Farmers across the UK have suffered amid the wettest summer in 100 years, with waterlogged fields and many crops left to rot.

The weather has made potatoes vulnerable to fungal infections that damage and stunt their growth.

Farmers say the situation has been made worse by the army of ‘grow-your-own’ gardeners. The Potato Council says they are responsible for spreading the blight because they can’t identify it quickly and do not know how to control outbreaks.

The so-called ‘late blight’ affecting potato crops is caused by fungal spores that reproduce rapidly in warm and moist conditions and are then spread on the wind.

This sort of fungal blight – phy- tophthora infestans – was responsible for the Irish Potato Famine and the devastation of crops in the Highlands and much of Europe in the 1800s.

While farmers routinely douse crops in fungicides to kill off the spores, gardeners tend to avoid using such chemicals. As a result, even small garden or allotment plots of infected potatoes can threaten farms across a wide area.

The Potato Council warned they were responsible for a ‘disproportionate amount of overall blight pressure’ in warm, wet seasons.

Council chairman Allan Stevenson said it would be better if amateurs left the growing of potatoes to the professionals. He told The Grocer magazine: ‘People should be encouraged to grow their own vegetables to learn about the origins of their food.

‘But the blight risk is real, and it would be preferable if people bought healthy, well-produced potatoes from their retailer, rather than grow their own.’

The spores can survive through the winter months on vegetation, in the soil and on any potato plants that are not properly cleared at the end of the harvest.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s have warned of shortages of UK-grown vegetables and higher prices in the run-up to Christmas.

Stores have doubled the price of popular varieties such as Maris Piper over the past year, while further increases on all types of root vegetables are expected.

Some retailers have even put up warning notices saying that fresh produce was not up to the normal ‘beauty pageant’ standard because of the rain.

The Potato Council has contacted amateur gardening organisations to produce a special blight factsheet and other guidance and advice on growing potatoes.

It has also recruited hundreds of ‘ blight monitors’ to check on the development of late blight both on allotments and in commercial crops.