Climate is now a potato market force – not just a farming problem

By Lukie Pieterse, Editor/Publisher Potato News Today

As heat, drought, heavy rain, and storage stress become more frequent, the global potato industry must treat resilience as a core business strategy, not a side project.

The potato industry has always lived with weather. That is not new. What is changing is the speed, frequency, and commercial impact of weather extremes on crop planning, yield stability, quality, storability, processing performance, and supply-chain confidence.

For decades, climate risk was often discussed as an agronomic challenge: too little rain, too much rain, a late spring, a hot summer, a difficult harvest. Today, those same events are increasingly becoming market events. Heat stress can reduce tuber set and size. Drought can limit yield and alter quality. Heavy rainfall can delay harvest and increase disease pressure. Poor growing conditions can follow potatoes into storage, where shrink, sprouting, disease, fry colour, and pressure bruise may decide whether a crop remains valuable or becomes a liability.

The practical message for the second half of 2026 is clear: climate resilience is no longer only a research priority. It is now a commercial priority.

The potato’s strength is also its vulnerability

Potatoes remain one of the world’s most important food crops because they are productive, versatile, widely adapted, and deeply embedded in both fresh and processed food systems. FAO’s 2026 International Day of Potato theme, “Where potatoes grow, livelihoods flourish,” is a reminder that the crop supports millions of growers, workers, processors, traders, and consumers around the world.

But the crop’s importance does not make it immune to stress. Potatoes are biologically sensitive to heat, water shortage, excess water, and abrupt changes in growing conditions. The market often sees the result only later – in lower yields, quality defects, reduced processing recovery, weaker storability, or higher losses after harvest.

That matters because potato value is not determined by tonnes alone. A crop can look respectable in gross yield terms but still underperform commercially if size profile, dry matter, skin finish, bruise resistance, fry colour, disease levels, or storage behaviour are poor. In a more volatile climate, the distinction between yield and marketable yield becomes increasingly important.

European crop monitoring is sending a warning

Europe’s 2026 growing season has already shown why close crop monitoring matters. The European Commission’s JRC MARS Bulletin for June reported generally favourable crop conditions in many regions, but it also noted that a dry spring and a May heatwave had reduced yield prospects for winter crops in parts of western, central, and eastern Europe. While the June bulletin was not a potato-specific warning, it pointed to the broader risk environment facing European agriculture as summer crops move through sensitive development stages.

For potato growers and processors, this kind of information is valuable because potatoes often reveal stress in complex ways. A few weeks of heat and water deficit may not immediately translate into a dramatic field loss, but the consequences can emerge in tuber number, bulking, dry matter, size distribution, common scab, secondary growth, hollow heart, or later storage behaviour.

The industry cannot afford to treat weather data as background noise. Crop monitoring, local field scouting, irrigation scheduling, disease forecasting, and storage-readiness assessments are becoming part of the same risk-management system.

Research is moving from theory to practical urgency

The EU-funded ADAPT project is one example of why potato resilience research is becoming more relevant to industry professionals. The project investigated how potato varieties respond to heat, drought, and other stress factors, with trials involving up to 54 varieties under drought and combined heat-and-drought conditions. Field work included locations in Spain and the Netherlands, with additional research in countries including Serbia and Austria.

That kind of work matters because resilience is not a slogan. It must be measured. Which varieties maintain tuber formation under stress? Which ones recover after drought? Which ones maintain processing quality? Which management systems reduce losses? Which stress signals can breeders use earlier in selection?

The potato industry needs these answers because climate adaptation cannot depend only on emergency responses. Irrigation may help where water is available, but irrigation alone will not solve the problem. Storage technology can reduce losses, but it cannot fully compensate for a crop that enters storage in poor physiological condition. Crop protection can manage some disease risks, but it cannot remove the underlying impact of heat, drought, flooding, or plant stress.

The future will require a more integrated approach: better varieties, better water management, better soil structure, better canopy management, better forecasting, better storage decisions, and better communication between growers, processors, agronomists, breeders, and buyers.

The cost question cannot be ignored

Climate adaptation is often discussed as if it is simply a matter of adopting better practices. In reality, many resilience measures cost money before they deliver returns.

Irrigation infrastructure is expensive. Precision monitoring tools require investment and training. Improved storage systems require capital. Soil health practices may take time to show measurable results. New varieties require trialling, seed multiplication, market acceptance, and processor approval. Growers already facing tighter margins cannot always absorb these costs easily.

This is where the industry needs a more honest conversation. If processors, retailers, governments, and consumers expect reliable potato supply in a more volatile climate, the burden cannot sit only on growers. Risk and investment must be shared more intelligently across the value chain.

Contract structures, crop insurance, water policy, storage incentives, research funding, variety adoption pathways, and long-term buyer relationships all have a role to play. Resilience will not be built by telling growers to “adapt” while leaving them alone with the bill.

Storage is where climate stress often becomes visible

One of the most important lessons for the potato industry is that climate stress does not end at harvest. A difficult growing season often becomes a difficult storage season.

Heat-stressed or water-stressed crops may behave differently in storage. Disease pressure may be higher. Dormancy may be weaker. Sprouting risk may increase. Bruising and pressure damage may become more serious. Processing quality may shift over time. Energy costs may rise if ventilation, cooling, or humidity management must work harder to stabilize the crop.

This is especially important for processing supply chains, where potatoes often need to be stored for months while maintaining fry colour, solids, and acceptable defect levels. The quality of storage management increasingly determines whether the industry captures the value of the crop or loses it after harvest.

Storage specialists should therefore be part of climate-resilience planning from the beginning, not brought in only after problems appear. Field history, harvest conditions, pulp temperature, disease risk, variety behaviour, wound healing, ventilation strategy, and sprout-control planning all need to be linked.

The industry needs a new definition of productivity

For much of modern agricultural history, productivity has been measured mainly in yield per hectare. That metric still matters. But in the potato sector, it is no longer enough.

A more useful definition of productivity must include marketable yield, processing recovery, water-use efficiency, input-use efficiency, storage retention, reduced waste, and financial return per unit of risk. The highest-yielding crop is not always the most profitable crop. The biggest pile is not always the best pile. The cheapest production system is not always the most resilient.

This is particularly important as fertilizer and energy costs remain volatile. A crop that requires high input use but fails under heat or storage stress may become increasingly risky. Conversely, a slightly lower-yielding system that produces consistent quality, stores well, and meets market requirements may become more valuable.

A strategic moment for breeders and seed systems

Breeders are now central to the climate-resilience conversation. The industry needs varieties that can handle heat, drought, disease pressure, and water variability while still meeting market expectations for appearance, taste, processing quality, dry matter, storability, dormancy, and input efficiency.

That is a demanding list. No single variety will solve every problem. But breeding priorities are clearly shifting. Climate resilience must sit alongside yield, disease resistance, processing performance, and consumer traits.

Seed systems also matter. A resilient variety has little impact if high-quality seed is unavailable, unaffordable, or not accepted by processors and buyers. Faster evaluation, better regional trials, and closer cooperation between breeders, growers, processors, and seed suppliers will be essential.

Bottom line: resilience must become operational

The potato industry does not need another vague call for sustainability. It needs practical resilience that works in the field, in storage, in factories, in export markets, and on balance sheets.

That means using weather and crop data earlier. It means selecting varieties with stress performance in mind. It means treating irrigation and soil management as strategic assets. It means connecting harvest decisions to storage outcomes. It means designing contracts and supply programs that reward reliability and quality, not only tonnes.

The second half of 2026 will not answer every climate question facing the potato industry. But it will reinforce a lesson already becoming impossible to ignore: weather risk is now market risk. The industry professionals who understand that first – and act on it seriously – will be better positioned for the years ahead.