Simone Baroke - Potatoes Must Move Beyond a Generic Positioning
As potato sales across Europe are dwindling, weather is only partly to blame. Simone Baroke, Euromonitor International, analyses the market.
Our latest fresh food data reveal that fresh potato sales continued to tumble in many core markets in 2013. Western Europe experienced a decline of 3%, which already sounds precarious enough, but in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland volumes plummeted by around 11%. Eastern Europe, a traditional stronghold for potatoes, has not been doing well either, recording a 1% decline in 2013 and a 2% fall over the 2008-2013 review period overall.
Cheap Main Meal
Appalling weather conditions, including widespread flooding across Germany and most of Central Europe last year, damaged crops and drove up prices. In mid-2013, according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, fresh potato prices had risen by 44% on the previous year.
Calamitous weather and prices, however, while certainly a contributing factor, are not the main reasons behind the golden tuber’s malaise. Historically, potatoes were valued chiefly for being a cheap and filling carbohydrate staple that would readily bulk out a main meal when meat and other protein foods were not affordable in great quantities to the average family.
For many, potatoes have become the expendable part of a meal, a sacrifice considered well worth making in order to lose a few pounds. The repeated assurance touted by potato growers and old-school dieticians that the potato (if not served fried or drenched in buttery sauces) constitutes, in fact, a low calorie food is not being embraced by today’s ever nutrition-savvier consumers. Some newer research clashes with the old mantra that all calories are created equal, suggesting that the body metabolises fats, proteins and carbohydrates quite differently, and trendy nutritionists are successfully propagating this message.
Read the full article in Potato Processing International/Potato Storage International, May/June issue.
