A lean, focused organisation which will be run by growers for growers – that was how the proposed Seed Potato Organisation (SPO) was being sold to the sector at a major industry event last week.

With the steering committee revealing that it was close to gaining the critical mass of support from growers to make the initiative viable one, interest ran high at a packed seminar on the topic at last week’s Potatoes in Practice.

Speaking to a packed seminar at the event which was held at the James Hutton Institute’s Balruddey Farm, outside Dundee, Aberdeenshire grower, Mike Wilson, outlined what the organisation hoped to achieve for the sector.

He said that the organisation would be set up as a co-operative and would have four main objectives:

• To represent the interests of the seed sector

• To fund research and innovation and technical services

• To support market development

• To ensure the economic and environmental sustainability of the seed potato sector.

Mr Wilson said that growers would have the final say on all areas of the organisation’s operations, which would be run on a 'one man, one vote' system, with a board of directors taking forward local views from regional meetings.

Distancing the proposed new organisation from AHDB Potatoes, rather than speak about a levy, those taking out membership of the organisation would initially purchase a redeemable £1000 of shares to establish a capital base, with a further annual membership fee of £29 a ha of seed grown – a figure he said equated to less than £1 a tonne.

He believed that operational costs of the SPO were likely to be in the region of £400,000 annually – but admitted that it might take up to five years before this scale was reached.

Mr Wilson said that a national survey which had followed the series of meetings across the country had been highly supportive of the idea, with almost a third of all producers already indicating they were willing to press ahead with the planned organisation – and he said he hoped that the organisation would be up and running by November of this year.

It was proposed that while ware growers and the trade would also be welcome to join the organisation, the focus would very much be on the seed side of the sector – and while the planed organisation had been a Scottish initiative, he welcomed interest at the meeting from seed growers south of the border.

Read more: The Scottish Farmer speaks: From seed potato wars to shows

The steering committee also welcomed the support given to the proposal by Mark Taylor, chair of GB Potatoes, a group which was being set up to cover the interests of a broader range of potato growers, but it was indicated that while the groups could co-operate, the groups focus on the seed sector justified it being set up as an independent organisation.

One of the first important roles to be taken up by the mew organisation could be the running of two of the highly important disease monitoring and forecasting services.

Both the ‘Fight against blight’ and the aphid monitoring services were widely accepted as being critical for the industry – and while SASA chief, Professor Gerry Saddler, said that the Scottish Government had stepped in to fund these, this was only for a one-year period:

“We are hugely supportive of the proposed SPO and ensuring that there is a healthy seed industry in the future,” said Saddler. “That is why we stepped into to provide funding for these services – but while we’re very much on your side, the industry itself will need to finance these services – which cost in the region of £200,000 a year – in the longer term.”