Innovate or shut down

In India, potatoes are grown in the winter and stored in the summer. This means that the product is stored in a mechanical cooling facility during the hottest period of the year.

This question was not literally asked at the ‘Land for Farming’ Precision Farming Conference on 15 December 2016, but it could have been. There were some critical voices. What should I do with all that data about my crops? Are they accurate enough? My advisors don’t know this either. Am I not giving my customers…

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.

Chips are king when it comes to the amount of potatoes that processors in Western Europe need every year. For years, it was the processors who were also the emperor in the world of potatoes. They were even largely able to set the potato prices themselves.