Potatoes have a balancing act to do on a few fronts

And, just as happened with the appointment of a drought minister in 1976, the Scottish Government’s announcement at the beginning of the week that we’d get our support loans early because of the effects of recent dry weather was enough to push the jet stream back into its ‘wet’ setting.

But any protracted spell of rain at this time of year will be a double-edged sword. While those looking for grass might be more than happy to see a good soaking, at this late stage it’s not going to put a smile on the faces of many cereal growers.

I guess it’s likely to be a bit late in the season for many tattie growers too – but it might let them switch the irrigators off for a spell. (Unsurprisingly, the sellers of irrigation equipment have been the main beneficiaries of the summer’s dry weather).

While it might be a bit soon to assume that dust-bowl summers will become the norm – with the potato quagmires of recent year’s still indelibly imprinted in the minds of many who grow spuds – it was interesting to hear the work being carried out to make tatties more resilient to extreme weather.

Those attending last week’s Potatoes in Practice (PiP) event at the Hutton’s demonstration farm, outside Dundee, will be aware of some of this work – with cultivars from the heat-ridden plains of Mexico being used as a possible source of genes which better survive hot dry conditions.

With the stock for many existing varieties coming from the higher, cooler plateau of South America, researchers revealed that our current varieties have a comfort zone of somewhere between 14 and 22°C centigrade. Although, even in Scotland, we had a few days above these temperatures, down south the higher temperatures are likely to have severely stunted yields.

But, of course, breeding projects aimed at spuds better able to cope with heat have a far wider application than the odd rare hot year in the UK. Even factoring in global warming, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be hot and dry – but such conditions are widely encountered in other areas of the globe.

With the humble potato taking a growing share of staple diets in Africa and other warmer regions, the ability to cope with heat would be a useful attribute for growers and if it is developed here, then it could be a boost for Scotland’s seed tattie industry.

However, like the recent outbreaks of fruit flies which have been taking place in kitchens around the country, there is more than one small fly in the ointment on breeding new tattie varieties.

For, as a field of tatties could pretty much be considered a field of clones, it’s a plant which seems to be peculiarly well suited to genetic manipulation and hopes were running high that newer, carefully targeted changes to a crop’s genetic code could swiftly introduce traits already present in tattie varieties into current top performers, such as Maris Piper.

A million miles away from the blunderbuss techniques which saw genes from different species introduced to plants in the early days of genetic modification – giving rise to the term Frankenfoods – these newer, more precise forms of manipulation (such as gene splicing and gene editing) are a different ball-game.

So, hopes were running high in the scientific community that the regulation of commercial crops grown using these new techniques would be far less draconian than it is for the older transgenic GM crops. But the disappointment amongst researchers in the field was made pretty plain at PiP at the recent European Commission ruling that, as far as regulations and safeguards were concerned, they are to be viewed in the same manner.

So, while the techniques can be used in the lab, there would continue to be strict controls on the growing of commercial crops from such sources.

The upshot is that, rather than taking five or so years to produce commercially acceptable crops which benefit from disease resistance, drought tolerance and many other 'good' traits which already exist out there in different varieties of the same species, it could well take 20 years or more.

That goes for all crops, not just potatoes. So it’s not good news if we’re planning on being able to fill the 9bn hungry bellies the earth is likely to be home to by 2050.

Of course, Brexit might offer an opportunity for the UK to take a different tack to that being adopted by Europe, and allow us to side more with the science-led approach generally adopted by the US on these matters.

However, while the UK Government might be a bit more willing to adopt a more relaxed approach, the Scottish Government – which funds much of the research on this front – still seems to be hell-bent on keeping the country free from crops grown using GM technology.

Time, perhaps, for our leaders to have a bit of a chat with the scientists they fund. For, as the Hutton’s boss, Professor Colin Campbell, said, the decision-making process involves more than just the science – society needs to buy into the idea as well. However, without some sort of political leadership on this front, it’s unlikely that the electorate will change its collective mind.

On the subject of Brexit, Potatoes in Practice also heard that the tattie sector is likely to be one of the few which could see some benefit from a sharp exit from the EU.

While our home growers may supply a large proportion of the fresh sector, an increasingly large proportion of growing processed potato segment – including frozen goods, are being imported, and foreign tatties supply more than 50% of this fairly lucrative market.

Any friction in trade is likely to make it more expensive to bring these processed tatties in and even with a fairly soft Brexit, the home-grown product should still look cheaper. A hard or no-deal option would make imports considerably more expensive.

Many of the processors appear to be tooling up to use more of the home-grown product and any increase in demand should translate to improved prices.

Of course, the AHDB’s head of strategic insight, David Swales revealed that, as always, there are a couple of caveats to this good news. “While increases in home production would be likely to result in an increase in demand for seed, the situation might be less beneficial for those who export seed,” he told growers.

“With Egypt and Morocco currently representing two of the major destinations for Scottish seed potato exports, they currently benefit from preferential deals on importation which have been negotiated by the EU.”

However, he said that in the event of a hard or a no deal exit from the EU it would be unlikely that they would continue to benefit from this arrangement – or that there would be time to get a similar status agreed in the short term.

The other down-side is the fact that more people could switch from growing other crops and move into growing potatoes if it proves more profitable than other sectors and it’s well recorded that the rewards of the crop are highly sensitive to the balance of supply and demand.

Although this year, with lower plantings and lower yields expected, prices are likely to rise, the sharp dip the other way in recent years when there was a bit of an overabundance highlights just how sensitive the market in this country is.