Potato Europe 2008

A lot of French Flair must have been involved in finding the most likely last 2 warm and sunny days of the year almost 2 years in front when the organisation set the dates for the Potato Europe 2008.



Was it because of the nice weather?, more than 10000 visitors attended the show with more than 3500 foreigners from 55 different countries.



The place has been extremely busy, especially on the first day when you are more likely to see the foreign guests.



As almost expected, more professionals and less growers attended the show, due to the workload in the fields after 2 weeks with some rain slowing down farmers.



A good organisation of the showground allowed to see grading machinery in action, trial plots of varieties of chemicals, harvester demos�



The Potato Trading Industry was all gathered in a village of tents where Pommies/Higgins was very well centrally located.



We had the opportunity to welcome on our stand some of the growers and suppliers who worked with us last season and thanks to David Scott and Higgins seeds, we talked to people from more and more exotic countries (Argentina, Bangladesh, Saudi�) for both seed and ware opportunities.



Of course everybody was after getting a feel for the new season but no clear answer came out of the smoke as most potatoes are still in the ground today in Western Europe. Some information was also contradicted by another during the course of the event.



We, as Pommies, have appreciated good comments from our prepack customers from Spain and Italy, and expect to do more with them this year. We have also heard about likely good opportunities for trade of crisping material to these countries. Growers are very focused on new varieties bringing better yields, we hope that a the light of our trials this year, we can bring some answers with our own varieties or via agreements on the distribution of some promising varieties from other breeders.



Our visitors from Frito Lay were also very much on alert on this subject and we have agreed to evaluate a couple of varieties in their factories from our commercial trial fields during the winter.



Many thanks to all of those from Higgins and Pommies who have contributed to make a success out of the event.