UK: Potato farmers SPot the difference as AHDB’s cutting-edge techniques become commercial reality

More than 120 farmers and agricultural professionals were at the Elveden Estate on Thursday, July 6, to look at how cutting-edge research was making a difference to its potato growing operation. The estate is one of four farms selected by farm levy-paying organisation AHDB Potatoes last year to become a Strategic Potato (SPot) farm where new techniques prove their worth by being taken out of the lab or the field trial and tried out on a commercial operation. The hope is that these will then be rolled out across UK potato farms, improving their productivity and performance. Thursday’s event was the first open day of the year at the 22,500 acre Suffolk estate, which lies in the East Anglian Brecks near Thetford. The SPot scheme started in 2015 with one site, which became three last year and increased to four this year. More