Jersey royal potatoes are three weeks behind schedule after suffering one of the most “trying” winters in years.
According to the Guardian, frosts from the “Beast from the East” and nearly double the 30-year average of rainfall in December and January left the ground saturated.
Jersey Royal exports around 30,000 tonnes of the potatoes to the UK each season, but producers say the figure could be up to 20% lower this year, with full volumes expected to be on supermarket shelves by the middle of May.
Tim Ward, operations director at the grower Albert Bartlett, said: “The hard frosts we received from the beast from the east affected most of the early crops.
“Although quality and taste will remain unaffected, we are at least three weeks behind our expected start date and are still in need of spring to arrive to avoid further delays.
“This is the nature of seasonal produce, with no two seasons ever the same. We normally face some challenges planting, predominantly during the winter months. However, a number of our fifth-generation farmers have not experienced such a trying period in their family businesses for many years.”
The Jersey Royal Company’s director of sales and marketing, William Church, added: “We are behind with planting, with only two-thirds of the export crop planted to date. In any other year we’d expect to be closer to 75% planted and have made a good start with planting the seed crop by now.”
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