Nationwide produce chairman Tim O’Malley reflects on major challenges for growers and government as potato producers are forced to dump large volumes of crop amid overproduction in Europe
I had lunch with one of our hauliers last week. Usual question: “You busy?” He said: “Yep, mad busy dumping spuds.” No great surprise there, but the volume he was talking about did surprise me. I’ve seen gluts of spuds before, but never to this level. And it’s not just an issue here. The Continent is as bad, if not worse.
It’s got to the stage that AD plants are closing their doors on spuds and stock feed merchants are offering zero pounds… delivered! One of our growers told me he called his stock feed merchant to try to sell him the 4,000 tonnes he has in his cold store. He was told: “The price is nil. You deliver and I’m inundated, so join the queue. Oh, and don’t turn off your fridges because if they’ve sprouted, I’ll reject them.” (Spud sprouts are toxic). Unbelievable!
Basically, if you have a poor or even average quality sample sat in your store at the moment, and you haven’t got a sales contract, you’ll struggle to find a home for them. It’s difficult to get a grip on just what volume has been dumped, and what is likely to be dumped, as it’s not something growers are proud of. Also, when it gets to this level, they are actually paying to dump their potatoes.
As a company, we speak to more UK growers on a daily basis than any other business. From what we’re hearing, tens of thousands of tonnes of spuds have already been dumped and far more will follow. It grieves me to say it, but hundreds of thousands of tonnes of UK potatoes will be dumped this year. On the Continent, we’re hearing millions of tonnes and, in some countries, growers are paying around €25/tonne to dump.
It’s soul-destroying for a grower to dump their perfectly good, edible crop. It’s also financially devastating, particularly after a season with four heatwaves, so on top of everything else, you’ve spent a fortune on irrigation.
So, why do we have a European glut of potatoes? The previous two seasons have been short, so prices and demand were relatively strong. As one grower put it to me, “the sugar beet price is now down to a level where, if you’re lucky, you break even, and cereal prices have been on the floor, so I planted more spuds”.
The other issue is ever-decreasing demand for fresh spuds. In 1974, British households were buying more than 1.3kg of fresh potatoes a week. By 2024, that was down to 326g. During the same period, purchases of processed potatoes, including chips and crisps, rose from 119g to 225g. However, even this is down from a high of 286g in 1996.
The question for UK growers nowadays is not just what can I grow profitably, but what can I grow that will not make a loss? With huge inflation on fuel, fertiliser and packaging, and lower contract sales prices for most crops, it’s a dilemma.
We’re an unusual grower in that we grow just one crop – onions – on around a thousand acres, to feed our onion packhouse in Lincolnshire. We’re always on the lookout for good land to rent, with plenty of water, on a minimum eight-year rotation. Normally, that’s not easy to find. However, we’ve never been offered so much good land this year, which is a sign of just how disillusioned UK farmers are with growing veg.
The government has set up a Farming & Food Partnership Board to “boost farm returns, accelerate technology uptake, and increase domestic production quickly”. Hallelujah! However, there’s a natural scepticism among UK growers as we’re talking about a government here that didn’t get off to a good start with the most ill-conceived, poorly executed, totally unjustifiable tax hike ever to hit UK farming. The family farming tax was a masterclass in government incompetence, second only to the winter fuel allowance debacle.
That said, I hear that the farming minister, Dame Angela Eagle, has got her teeth into this one and she’s quite passionate about it, which is reassuring. As a nation, we import around 48 per cent of our food, which is too much. That rises to around 65 per cent for fruit and veg, and I only see it going one way: the wrong way. Her job is to reverse this. She’s speaking at Festival of Fresh on 10 June. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say, as UK growers need all the help we can get.
With over 300 employees and a group turnover of £205 million, Nationwide Produce serves more than 1,000 customers throughout Europe. It operates across all market sectors – foodservice, catering, processing, wholesale, export, and retail – and supplies a comprehensive range of vegetables, fruit, and exotics from around the world.
