I find it very strange that potatoes have not been included within the remit of the Food Vision Tillage Group.
The reality is that ‘spuds’ are an integral part of the rotation followed by many cereal businesses and vice-versa.
In fact, the most recent advice from Teagasc would point to the need for even stronger links being forged between the cereal and potato sectors.
Driving this is the growing challenge of Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN) and eelworm. Put simply, potato farmers need access to more land of a suitable quality.
Cereal growers are the obvious solution to this problem.
Potatoes and tillage
There is another issue of a more fundamental nature that brings the tillage and potato sectors together – financial sustainability.
Recent years have highlighted just how exposed both industries can be to poor growing years and, in particular, treacherous harvests.
It is already apparent that the Food Vision Tillage Group will recommend a form of crop insurance scheme for cereal growers.
It would make total sense to me that such a support measure should be extended to include the potato industry.
The scheme to be espoused by the Food Vision Tillage Group will envisage a tripartite funding mechanism – government, growers and millers/processers.
It’s an approach, I would suggest, that would also meet the future needs of potato growers.
But this cannot happen if spuds are not included within the remit of the group.
Crop insurance
One tremendous advantage of taking such an approach is that potato growers take control of their own destiny.
An insurance scheme gives everyone involved a degree of certainty where the future is concerned.
During those years when everything goes according to plan, all interested parties will be making a contribution to a financial pot that can be drawn from when the ‘going gets tough’.
Crop insurance schemes work tremendously well in countries like the United States and Australia. So, there is no reason why a comparable approach cannot work in this part of the world.
That I am aware of, crop insurance does not run contrary to any support principles espoused within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
In any event, Brussels seem more open than ever to farm policies that reflect local need. And if farmers in a specific region are willing to contribute to their own destiny, in tandem with national governments, it all sounds like a ‘plan’ to me.