July 11, 2017 | Articles

Seed potato or potato Seed?

Last month I read in the Dutch agricultural press that the Dutch seed company BEJO introduced a commercial True Potato Seed (TPS) variety as first company in the Western world. The variety is a tetraploid hybrid and the company aims with this variety for markets in Afrika, Asia and Central Amerika.

July 11, 2017 | Articles

A sweeter look on potato production.

The world-wide demand for French fries and processed potato products will increase over the coming years with about 3 percent per year worldwide, but in some areas such as India and China the increase will be more than 10 percent. This was predicted in a study of the Rabobank in the Netherlands, published last October.

December 07, 2016 | Articles

Eye in the Sky

This autumn a mechanization fair “Agrotechniek Holland” ATH was held near Biddinghuizen in the Netherlands. Demonstrations and displays showed the newest available technique in Agriculture. One of the demonstrations involved a smart farming pavilion with a potato field used for demonstration of smart farming techniques. In the field different fertilizer applications and plant distances were…

September 14, 2016 | Articles

Save the soil

In North-Western Europe the potato Harvesting season is starting again. This is also the season of shows and demonstrations. In September there was Potato Europe in northern France, you have potato demonstration days in the Southwest of the Netherlands and Agro Techniek Holland in the center of the Netherlands.

June 15, 2016 | Articles

Potatoes healthy or not?

Lately a lot of discussion is going on about how healthy or unhealthy potatoes are. When you google “is potato healthy or not” you get more than 40 million results. So there is a lot of discussion all over the internet, the press, and popular magazines about how healthy potatoes are.I think most of the…

March 09, 2016 | Articles

Potatoes in space

When I opened my newspaper this morning a picture of the first plant flowering in ISS (International Space Station) was shown. Last august astronauts were already eating the first space grown Red Romaine lettuce in the same space station. Growing plants in space is becoming popular, how about potatoes?

March 11, 2015 | Articles

Seeing the field throughthe stems

The potato chain is largely automated nowadays and data is collected everywhere. The farmer collects data about his crop, about the soil moisture and about the weather in order to control the cultivation as best he can.