At the start of the planting season, around 10,000 Ukrainian households received free bags of Dutch seed potatoes from trading company IPM Potato Group LTD, as Leo Hanse and Zindziwe Janse reports for Potato World magazine.
The donation is an initiative of IPM Holland BV, in close cooperation with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) and the Irish Ministry of Agriculture, operations manager Erik Appeldooren explains.
The idea for the donation was born during a business trip to Kenya, Appeldooren states. There he got into conversation with a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture in Ireland, about the situation in Ukraine. Soon they were discussing the desire and the possibilities to offer help there, for example with something a company like IPM has to offer: seed potatoes.
A calculation shows that, with the harvest of the donated seed potatoes, eventually 120,000 people can be fed.
Source: Potato World magazine. Read the full story here
Photo: Credit Potato World magazine
