Potato farmers have said there will be smaller chips, crisps and baking potatoes this year due to the extreme weather.
Leading supplier Albert Bartlett said the prolonged dry weather was having a serious impact on the size of crops, as well as making conditions more difficult for growers.
Paddy Graham-Jones, group procurement director at Albert Bartlett, warned size was the first thing to be affected without rainfall. This is particularly difficult for the UK market, which he said had a “big bias” towards baking potatoes, which this year would be smaller than expected.
Graham-Jones said the business was currently in discussions with its customers to change specifications to accommodate smaller crop, with the biggest concern being baker size and volumes.
He added that the business was also looking at the “length of our chips” and warning customers they would have to be a bit shorter this year.
“The crisps are going to be smaller too,” he said.
Last year there were also warnings about the impact of dry weather on supply but this year it “started so much earlier”, Graham-Jones added, saying the business had been “battling” the weather from the start of the season in Jersey.
He added this meant that the soil moisture deficit – how much water farmers need to put back on land to get it back to an equilibrium – was “far bigger than last year and that’s why it’s going to be worse”.
Last week the government announced a raft of support for farmers dealing with the drought, including making funding for on-farm reservoirs available and improving water access.
Some parts of the country are doing worse than others. Scotland, which supplies 65% of the brand’s potato crop, has had fewer water restrictions and more rainfall, meaning supply is less of a concern.
However, Graham-Jones warned this would not “fill the hole” that was being created by the shortfall in the English crop.
In East Anglia, which had 96% less rainfall than average in July, many potato farmers have now run out of water.
One farmer told Graham-Jones that “irrigating my potatoes this summer has been like pouring water on a dead corpse”, explaining that where plants would normally react to water and “grow and survive, it’s just dying because its so hot”.
Farmers typically apply seven or eight inches of water to potatoes in England, but this year many have had to apply 15, increasing costs for growers during a year that has already been more expensive thanks to the conflict in the Middle East.
Graham-Jones added that the problem now was that without water it would be difficult to harvest potatoes without damaging them.
“Normally we keep one inch of water so we can put that on the field before we harvest,” he said. “But we were so short of water earlier on that we risked it, it, and applied it to the crop to keep it alive, hoping it would rain before harvest, but we haven’t had any rain in East Anglia.”
The business was working to use as much of the crop as possible, Graham-Jones explained, including finding a home for surplus potatoes left over from last season.
It is also investigating different crop varieties that will be more suitable for dryer and hotter conditions and is encouraging water investment on farm.
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