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Ireland has the worst potato harvest in recent memory and is now considered a 'salvage operation'. [1]
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Date: 2023-11-04
The Irish Farmers' Association ( IFA) has called the 2023 potato harvest the worst in recent memory and is now a salvage operation. The culprit is heavy rainfall, an increasingly common phenomenon due to the disruption of global rainfall patterns due to climate change.
Sean Ryan, the chair of the IFA, reported that flooding had put the drills underwater following recent flooding. A drill is the mounds in rows of potatoes (see cover image).
A drill is a shallow furrow for seed potatoes, it will look like rows of mounded soil and it can be made using a furrower or more easily by dragging a ridging hoe in a straight line through the earth. Seed potato tubers are then placed in the drill and covered over.
Ryan stated that 60 percent of the potatoes grown in Ireland have yet to be harvested. Sizable fields of the crucial food tuber have already been lost. With the extratropical storm Ciarna and the rapidly approaching Diogenes on its tail, the outlook for the remaining crop is grim. Potatoes are grown in Europe and likely will affected by the same storm systems. The crop is also grown internationally in such countries as China and Australia.
43 acres of main crop potatoes which should be harvested by now only for the very wet conditions on the lands of tillage farmer Dick Fitzgerald, Loughane, East Cork
“Met Eireann data shows some stations have already exceeded the average annual total rainfall and others close to it. Now that we are in November, we are in extremely difficult territory with this much crop left to be harvested,” he said. “The heavy rain has washed most of the clay off the top of the drills which leaves the crop more prove to frost damage. A few hard frosts at this point will wipe out entire crops,” he added. The 2023 potato season was always going to be a late year as crops were planted very late due to weather conditions in the springtime. Maturation was slow and crops were a minimum of six weeks behind schedule before the current weather conditions kicked in. “This year, potato growers were forced to harvest in reverse due to weather conditions. Dry fields were harvested first leaving the wetter ground to be harvested now. Very little potatoes have been harvested into stores to date as the market absorbed a lot of crops as they were harvested,” the IFA National Potato Committee Chair said.
Farmers will be in serious trouble, may take an economic hit, and will only survive with outside help. Ryan ended by stating, "Growers will not be able absorb the financial hit if crops are lost due to weather damage and are going to need to be supported if we want to ensure the medium-term survival of the sector. "
The already saturated soil in the country flooded with the arrival of Ciaran, and hail along with hurricane-force winds shredded the remaining plants in some parts of Ireland and Northern Island.
x Watch: Flooding hits Northern Ireland ahead of Storm Ciaran pic.twitter.com/vwQgYIj5RY — The Independent (@Independent) November 2, 2023
x A major storm #Ciaran will blast the UK and France with violent, hurricane-force winds on Thursday. Significant waves along the coast.
https://t.co/ZtZ22J1EJr — severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) October 30, 2023
Storm Domingos is rapidly approaching Europe.
From NASA on worldwide agriculture and climate change:
Climate change may affect the production of maize (corn) and wheat as early as 2030 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, according to a new NASA study published in the journal, Nature Food. Maize crop yields are projected to decline 24%, while wheat could potentially see growth of about 17%. Using advanced climate and agricultural models, scientists found that the change in yields is due to projected increases in temperature, shifts in rainfall patterns, and elevated surface carbon dioxide concentrations from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. These changes would make it more difficult to grow maize in the tropics, but could expand wheat’s growing range.
The Great Potato Famine:
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