The Early Season Potato Harvest has Begun With Double the 2022 Price

Potato harvesting for the early season has started, and prices are double those of the early crop from the previous year.

On July 25, Mintec Benchmark Prices for Processing Potato Fontane Belgium were estimated at EUR550/mt, an increase of (y-o-y) 175% from the previous year. The EU Mars crop update report for July 2023 lowered the June report's potato yields downward by 3%. At 34.4 tonnes per acre as of right now, the anticipated output is still 1% over the five-year average.

“Within the North-west European Potato Growers (NEPG) region, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands are expected to have lower crop yields than their five-year averages. However, France's yield is anticipated to increase by 5% compared to last year's figures. Germany is forecast to achieve the best yields in the NEPG and EU at 41.5 tonnes per hectare, a 3% improvement over Germany's five-year average,” a recent Mintec report reveals.

Market sources are nonetheless concerned that the actual crop yield and total production may fall short of the estimates following the lack of precipitation earlier in the year may have hampered crop development, notwithstanding the modification to the overall EU yield forecast.

According to the preliminary NEPG estimate for the planted area in 2023 and a weighted forecast of potato yields from the EU Commission's July Mars report, the NEPG output level is projected to be 21.09m tonnes, down 2.8% from the previous year and 4.7% less than the five-year average.