Many potato growers have written off whole fields, with losses of £3,000 a hectare, according to agronomist Denis Buckley, who was speaking at last week’s Adas Syngenta Progressive Potato Farming Conference.

Buckley called for a £30-per-tonne increase in potato prices for next season in order to sustain the category.

Meanwhile, Neil Cameron, agribusiness consultant at Bidwells, agreed that predicting next year’s potato crop area will be extremely difficult given the prevailing contrast of high free-market prices against the bad volume of the past season.

Cameron, citing figures from the Potato Council's annual Cost of Productions report, said that total costs this year were up nine per cent on most potato crops, and that there had been a 13 per cent increase (£300/ha) in variable costs.

Furthermore, the importance of implementing new seed treatments to help along the 2013 crop was hammered home by seed treatment specialist David Turner.

He said: “Applying seed treatments to clean, dry potatoes at the point of entry into store has been nigh on impossible for most growers.

'However, new seed treatments appear to have real opportunity to reduce the damaging effects of key seed-borne potato pathogens, including Black Dot and Rhizoctonia. Combined with the new application technology it is the way forward for liquid seed treatment.'

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