Potato people with big hearts: Tell us about the everyday heroes you know

By Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today

A short clip on X stopped me in my tracks this week. It was shared by JO – @jomickane – and it features an 80-year-old gentleman named Bill, quietly working away in his garage. Bill is a widower who lost his wife after a marriage of 63 years, and he spends his days making wooden toys “for children who have little or nothing”.

His workshop is his garage, his paint studio is his dining room table, and every single toy he finishes is donated to Daffodils Dreams, a small charity supporting disadvantaged children across Wigan and Leigh in the UK. To the children who receive them, he might as well be Santa’s best-kept secret.

That image of one old gentleman, one garage, one dining room table, and a pile of old-fashioned wooden toys will stay with me for a very long time. And it made me think about our own world of potatoes.

From toys on a table to tubers in a cellar

Most people will never meet Bill, and most of the children he helps will never know his name. Yet his work is as real and as necessary as any big charity campaign. It is ordinary, local, and utterly human.

The potato industry is full of people like that too, whether we see them or not. Growers who quietly donate a truckload of surplus potatoes to a food bank. Storage managers who organise a weekend gleaning day so local families can pick up what would otherwise go to waste. Processors who make sure off-spec product is rerouted to community kitchens instead of the bin. Workers and volunteers who use their time, their sheds, their skills and their networks to make sure that someone else’s child has a hot meal.

I would like to start finding – and telling – more of those stories to our readers.

What is a “potato Bill”?

When I say “potato Bill”, I am thinking of people in our sector who do for potatoes what Bill does for toys:

• They use what they already have – land, storage, machinery, skills, contacts – for the benefit of people who have very little.
• They do it quietly, without much fuss or PR.
• The impact is often local and practical: a meal on a plate, a school visit that sparks a dream, a family whose grocery bill stretches a little further.

A “potato Bill” might be:

• A grower who sets aside a portion of the crop each year for local food banks or shelters.
• A cooperative that organises regular donations of off-grade potatoes that are still perfectly good for eating.
• A small processor that supplies discounted or donated products to community kitchens, school feeding schemes or refugee support groups.
• A group of farm staff who volunteer time and fuel to deliver potatoes where they are needed most.
• A teacher, agronomist or advisor who uses potato projects in schools or youth groups to talk about food, dignity and opportunity.

In many cases, no one outside their immediate circle even knows what they are doing.

Why these stories matter now

We live in a time when:

• Food inflation has eroded purchasing power for millions of families.
• Many communities – rural and urban – are one bad season or one missed paycheque away from real hardship.
• Farmers and workers themselves are under pressure from weather extremes, market volatility and rising costs.

Yet even under this strain, people in our industry are still finding ways to share what they have. Potatoes, in particular, are a powerful vehicle for that generosity: calorie-dense, nutritious, versatile and relatively affordable. A few sacks donated at the right time can feed a lot of people.

By highlighting “potato Bills” around the world, we are not looking to congratulate ourselves as a sector. We are trying to:

• Give quiet people credit for what they already do.
• Offer practical, copy-and-paste examples that others can adapt in their own regions.
• Remind ourselves – and the wider public – that agriculture is not only about yield curves, technology and markets, but also about care, solidarity and simple human decency.

Launching a new focus on everyday generosity in potatoes

Over the coming months, I would like to publish occasional features on Potato News Today that spotlight these kinds of initiatives. The stories might be short or in-depth, but the core criteria will be simple:

• There is a clear link to potatoes (farming, storage, processing, trade, research or community projects centred on the crop).
• The activity offers tangible benefit to disadvantaged children, families or communities – whether in the form of food, experiences, education or support.
• It is driven by people or organisations who are not primarily doing it as a marketing or sponsorship exercise, but out of conviction.

These features will sit alongside our regular news coverage, but they will speak to something deeper: the values that quietly hold this industry together.

How you can help – send us your “potato Bills”

This is where I would like to invite you, our readers, to get involved.

If you know someone in your region who fits this description of a “potato Bill” – an individual, a family, a company, a farm team, a charity, a school, a researcher or a community group – please consider sharing their story with me so we can highlight it on Potato News Today.

You do not need to send a polished press release at all. A simple email is more than enough. Ideally, include:

• A short description of what they do, in your own words.
• Where they are based (country, region, town).
• How potatoes are involved in their initiative.
• Who benefits from their efforts (for example, local families, schoolchildren, refugees, workers, elders).
• Any contact details or website links that will help us verify the information.
• If possible, one or two photos we could consider for publication (with permission).

You are welcome to contact me directly at lukie@potatonewstoday.com with the subject line “Potato Bill nomination”.

Submissions can be in English, but if that is difficult, a brief note in your own language is also welcome – we will do our best to understand and follow up.

No story is too small. A single pallet donated at harvest, a one-off fundraiser, a school project that turned into something more – all of these are part of the bigger picture.

Back to Bill, and forward to us

Bill in Wigan does not run a big NGO. He has a garage, some tools, paint on his dining room table, and a heart that cannot bear the idea of a child with nothing. Through Daffodils Dreams, his toys find their way into the hands of children who might otherwise be forgotten.

In the potato world, our tools look different – seed, soil, storage bins, graders, fryers, spreadsheets, research plots and supply contracts. But they can be turned into instruments of the same kind of quiet, practical kindness.

If you know a “potato Bill”, please tell me about them. Let us make sure their work does not stay hidden in a cellar, a shed, an office or a small back room. Let us bring those stories to light, so that others can be encouraged – and perhaps inspired – to do something similar in their own corner of the world.

You will find related stories in the section “Potato People with Big Hearts” here on Potato News Today.

Author: Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today