Nedato puts full focus on French-fry potatoes

August 18, 2023

Since 1963, Nedato has been supplying a wide range of potatoes to buyers in the Netherlands and abroad. ‘On the one hand, our organization markets potatoes of affiliated growers as raw material for the processing industry. In addition, we present ourselves as their independent companion and help to improve potato cultivation. ‘More and more often it is necessary to involve the entire cropping plan in the organization and cultivation of potatoes,’ says Wim van de Ree, general manager of the cooperative from Oud-Beijerland. With this full focus on growing and trading French-fry potatoes, Nedato wants to be a partner for parties in the potato chain. ‘We are a healthy organization with 100 percent own capital. That is important, because Nedato clusters the sales of potatoes for its members. We want to organize market certainty for our growers properly and as sustainable as possible. To achieve this, we have to work together as a chain. There is no point in sitting on a pile of potatoes and waiting for someone to come and buy the potatoes. We believe that you should give each other a place in the chain and that includes a good value distribution so that everyone in the chain receives a reward for their efforts and risk,’ Van de Ree explains the vision.

Sparring partner for the growers

‘We want to be a sparring partner for our growers, to get maximum financial result from the potato yield for the grower. Therefore we want to take a much closer look at the organization of potato cultivation. This includes the choice of varieties, estimating the risks, the variety distribution, the distribution of sales opportunities and, of course, the pricing systems for French-fry potatoes. To cover the price risk for our growers, we offer the Nedato Flex System. This system gives growers the opportunity to participate in five different pricing systems, such as fixed price, clicks on the futures market, pool without presale, top and bottom pool, daily prices with market certainty and daily prices without market certainty. The grower can choose what he wants and make a mix. The question is, how much risk are you willing and able to take? And which profile suits you as a grower?’, the general manager presents the possibilities.

From crop approach to cropping plan approach

‘In addition, we see that the world is changing rapidly. Customers who annually expand their production capacity, wonder how the supply of raw materials should take place in the coming years. In addition, you see a flattening of the acreage and the yield, partly due to measures from Brussels. We see that, due to changed laws and regulations and the decreasing availability of crop protection products, we increasingly have to solve the problems in potato cultivation in other crops. Cultivation is moving towards more of a cropping plan approach rather than a crop approach. Take, for example, the problems with wireworms. Nowadays you have to solve these problems in grain cultivation, by placing bait traps. Restrictions on nitrogen fertilization must also be resolved in a cropping plan context. The same applies to CAP measures. In short, there are plenty of challenges for potato growers, that we have to solve in a broader context than just potato cultivation. We want to support the potato growers even more in this, together with one of our shareholders CZAV. We want to focus more on that concept and market it more widely. We also want to look for partners, both in cultivation and sales. We are open to all options for further development. Look at research for example. By working together on this, you can initiate much more specific research and can benefit from the interaction with other crops with multiple parties. There are organisations, such as Cropsolutions, that are already looking for this kind of broader research. This also applies to data management, collecting data and translating it into management information, which is becoming increasingly important. You can already see many initiatives there, with specialized precision agriculture applications. You can invest in that yourself, but you actually have to do that together, approach it more broadly in a building plan context,’ reveals Van de Ree. ‘We will present our new focus in the NAO-Netherlands-pavilion at PotatoEurope. It is great that there is a central organization that organizes participation in the trade fair on behalf of the members and relieves us of all burdens. This is in line with our vision of jointly presenting yourself as partners in the potato chain. Visit us at stand T53’, Van de Ree invites visitors to come by and have a conversation with Nedato.

NAO-Netherlands-pavilion e-book

As a closely involved partner of the NAO-Netherlands-pavilion, PotatoWorld has published an e-book regarding the pavilion and its participants at PotatoEurope 2023. Find the e-book here.

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