It’s a fine balance on weather in the potato sector. Too wet and machinery is being pulled - too dry potatoes are being bruised.

Stephen McCabe of Haggard Stores, while not looking for rain, explained that the rain in recent days would help with meeting quality specifications, but not too much rain is needed.

He explained that farmers were having to pull out of fields where varieties were being affected by bruising due to dry conditions.

Stephen said there are high dry matter contents in potatoes at present and as they are going up in the digger, they can get black spot bruising.

Many of Stephen’s growers are producing crisping potatoes.

Hot box

“A lot of our growers would hot box potatoes, so they’d put them into a box overnight at high humidity, just to check everything is going okay.

"There can be fairly costly rejections in the factory if there are any sort of bruises. They don’t like black edges to crisp. It's definitely causing an issue.

“Some people have had to pull out of varieties because there was a level of bruising that they couldn’t have, so they moved on to other fields.

“Certain varieties will bruise, they have a higher dry matter and they lend themselves more to bruising and they have to be handled like eggs.”

Positive

Overall, Stephen said potato growers are generally positive at present.

He explained that price is reasonably okay and early crop yields are good. I think as we move on through the season, into late-May potatoes, looking at yield digs numbers are lower.

“At the moment, being able to clear fields in relatively very good conditions is a joy. Long may it continue.”

Speaking earlier this week on the Tillage Podcast, he said a day’s rain won’t do any harm. It will soften the soil and clay will flow better across the webs.

Stephen was keen to note he didn’t want too much rain to allow the remainder of potatoes to be dug in good conditions and to allow winter wheat to go in after those crops.

You can listen to the full interview with Stephen on this week’s Tillage Podcast by clicking here.