Farming potatoes

I've been thinking of ways that I could make some money from my land. I have 3 acres, of which about 1 acre is ideal for potato growing.

I've looked up the expected yield per acre, and apparently it is about 10 metric tonnes. That equate to 400 of the 25kg sacks you get in wholesale greengrocers. That's a lot of spuds.

But then I got to thinking about wholesale rates for a 25kg sack, about £2.50 last time I went to the auction. Then there's the cost of seedies, the cost of planting, looking after and harvesting, and that alone makes it seem worthless.

But then it occurred to me that if you grow for personal use that's one thing, but if you grow commercially you can't afford a crop failure so there is probably insurance involved.

Then it occurred to me that while we would normally apply the rule of not growing tatties in the same spot for at least 2 years after harvesting a crop, potato farmers don't have that luxury, and use the same ground every year, so that introduces cost of fertilisers, pest control, and disease control.

By my reckoning, after all that, the profit is actually a net loss.

How do farmers do it? It seems to me there's no money in it, and in fact a loss is far more likely than a profit.

 

Thats 132,000 square foot.

Plant something that you can sell that will grow in a square foot to the value of a pound.

Set up a website to flog them. Dig every other one as you sell them, giving more space for the remaining ones, then sell those next season for £2, and so on.

Just a thought.

 

My brother in law grows and sells them from his 'farm'. Big machinery for planting,harvesting , sorting and bagging,huge amounts of artificial,and a solid bulk buyer.

I get them off him for free ,that's why I stopped growing them....

 

Fully grown hedges. I calculated that they cost about £ 30,000 per acre to plant (assuming you buy in "quite large plants" - you could take your own cuttings of course, but they will take longer to mature) and then when you sell you would make £ 750,000 per acre - I would guess that would be about 3 - 5 years later.

Just needs water, and some fertilizer, during the season and some nipping of buds during the dormant season to get them to bush up, and then some trimming in the last year or two.

e.g. Practicality Brown (clever name )
http://www.pracbrown.co.uk/

and Instant Hedge
http://www.instanthedges.co.uk/

 

Even crazier is that it if isn't profitable to grow them in the UK, how can it be profitable grow them some 2187 miles in Israel. Peat is taken from Ireland to Israel which makes even less sense, and we import some 350,000 tonnes of potatoes a year. Even sadder is that our demand for cheaper produce is also using up water supplies in the producing countries that will never be replaced. Not a good thing!!

With ever increasing fuel and transport costs, surely the market trend will have to change as whole, not just with potatoes.

 

Too right Eddie,

We can't carry on like this.

I did some back breaking work in a potato packing factory in the last recession. The local farmers bring all their spuds to the factory, where they are washed, going through girt machines that vomit spuds onto unsuspecting workers. There was no instruction or training whatsoever. You just got told to go an stand by the machine at 6AM, it was switched on & started throwing spuds at you and you just had to look around to see what the others were doing and try to copy. Then, when you think you'd got the hang of it, a bell would ring and spuds would vomit from another part of the machine, it had changed from 5kg bags to 50kg sacks, and again you had to look at what the other were doing to work out what to do.

I was fit from working on the mushroom farm, shifting 30 tonnes of compost a day by hand, but the extra 10 tonnes a day, shoulder hoiked onto pallets a foot higher than the top of your head nearly killed me.

I saw students collapse thru the strain of the work. One of them had his fingers stitched into the top of a sack. There was no health and safety advice, in fact, just no advice at all.

Apart from that, near the end of the line, just before the perfectly clean spuds were stiched up, there was a bloke putting 2 or 3 hand fulls of peat into each sack to make the consumer think they had been grown in peat rather than the good old Somerset mud.:DOH:

Now if thats what the conditions are like here, what are they like for workers abroad

 

That's terrible.

I guess that all the time we demand cheap produce, it just won't change.

I would also like to see blemished misshapen produce offered. That in it self would surely bring costs down, and in my opinion, taste etc wouldn't suffer as result.

One of my biggest gripes is the apples that we get offered. They are either bruised to hell, or are like a dried up sponge that goes brown with the first bite. Cold storage and our quest for non seasonal produce, make for some dire food.
Kent with its fruit orchards used to be lovely to travel through, but now look at it, they are all but gone.

 

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Growing any plants (crops), even with all the failures that I have is the easy part, selling is the hard part, making a profit is the really hard part!

Growing and selling a few different plants may be possible, but it is only worthwhile when you can grow lots and no one such as shops will give you anything for them, they want them for nothing and delivered as well!

Some years ago a chap who had a very poorly paid job, took on a plot to grow stuff to sell at car boot and markets on Sat's and Sundays.

He gave up the plot as he could buy what he wanted and more for as he said almost nothing, with no effort on his part.

After a few months he gave up his job, and spent his whole time selling at markets in the surrounding towns.

His father initially financed him and how he prospered, he now lives in a four bedroom house bought new, but he works six or seven days a week!

Cheers!

 

In season is the way to go Eddie, that and preserves that we make ourselves. I'm still eating chutney from lasts seasons apples, rosehip syrup for the vitamin C, medlar & rosehip jelly, salted beans, apple sauce etc.

Just started alfalfa sprouts,lettuce is coming on, spring onions are ready, as is sorrel, kale & rhubarb.

I do have a few jars of some tomato like preserve, that I haven't got the foggiest what i've made:DOH:

Bought a marker pen, will need to get some lables too:DOH:

 

Now that's a life style to embrace and enjoy.

I have to admit that Home Farmer magazine has given my a bit of kick up the backside when it comes to preserves etc. We should have started years ago, but for some reason it always seemed a very daunting prospect. Now thanks to that magazine, we look forward to getting stuck into it.

 

Some good ideas on here, and a lot to think about.

The reasons I bought my land were (in order):

1. To use it for an eco project. I wanted to provide a safe haven for the creatures we so often overlook. Particularly the likes of bees, butterflies, moths, stuff that hunt said creatures (bats and the likes) that are all losing ground to our relentless development and drive for more 'efficient' agriculture.

2. To produce food and to demonstrate that we can have our cake and eat it, i.e. we can eat healthy without knackering the environment.

3. To find a way to make a living off it without breaking rules 1 or 2.

My original plan was to use part of it as a nursery, growing native flora and insect friendly herbs. Back then I didn't realise just how destructive rabbits and deer can be (I expected about 10% loss to rabbits, a more accurate figure would be close to 100% without expensive protection). My plan was to fill the land with wild flowers and culinary herbs, just growing in the ground, and remove for sale no more than 50% of the plants, and not all in one spot, with the goal being to replace those that are removed (by seed or plugs) so that I could get a sustainable cycle on the go.

Now I have a bit more practical experience and know that doesn't work, I'm back to looking at ways to tick all three boxes so to speak.

 

I wonder if there is a way that you could combine your services/produce with that other like minded people in the area and some how sell theirs and your produce from your location.
It is currently such a shame that major supermarkets have such a monopoly on things. Hopefully it will one day change, so fingers crossed for the return of locally produced food and corner stores*. Having said that, until government (any government) wake up and reduce rates etc to small family business, change will be very slow or not at all.



*I can dream, and it doesn't seem too much to ask.