It’s not easy being an ugly Irish potato

It’s not easy being an Irish potato. You’re expected to hide your mucky origins and be easy to handle, cheap and beautiful at all times. And even that might not cut the mustard, because we increasingly want the younger model.

Unblemished baby potatoes are the new black in the potato game, according to the Irish Farmers' Association. News emerged yesterday that the acreage Irish farmers devoted to growing potatoes this year is at a 20-year low. Pressure for the perfect spud means growers may have to move away from the mucky and uglier traditional tuber and into the arms of the dewy baby potato – or salad potato, as it's known in the trade.

In a field in Mooncoin, Co Waterford, Eddie Doyle is out assessing his crop before harvest begins in the coming weeks. He’s the man you can think about the next time you pop a scalding vinegary chip in your mouth. His Maris Piper and Markies – the latter is a Dutch low-sugar, high-starch variety – are the spuds of choice for the country’s chippers, because they turn pale gold when fried. “Unfortunately, they don’t really want the trouble of peeling the older varieties that make much nicer chips,” he says, “the likes of British Queens, Kerr’s Pinks and Records.”

Doyle, who is the chairman of the IFA’s national potato committee, says growers who give up on potatoes are not being replaced. “We stuck to our roots and do a little bit of everything.”

He’s an unusual farmer in an age when farming increasingly means one activity rather than a mixture. He has a dairy herd and grows swedes as well as his potato crop. “We used to grow carrots and parsnips, but imports left us with no money.”

He was once surrounded by potato growers who supplied Waterford city.

Talk to the dwindling numbers of Irish vegetable growers and the subject of the German discounters Aldi and Lidl comes up sooner or later. “They’re the detriment of this industry, with the relentless promotion of our product at 39 and 49 cents,” Doyle says. “That’s below the cost of production, and that’s why our industry is fading.”

Surpluses

Ireland is regularly flooded with surpluses from UK and European growers, leaving domestic commercial vegetable growers unable to compete. But that might not be such a strong feature of the potato market this year, Doyle says. First, the same quantities are not available, and, second, the strength of sterling means that cheap surpluses aren’t quite as cheap as they used to be.

Nora Sheehan has been a potato grower on the family farm outside Castletownroche for 25 years. Her thoughts on the baby spud? She wouldn’t put them on the dinner table, and they’re not easy to grow.

Farmers have to plant twice as much seed potato, and their crop can be rejected if the “skin finish is not right”.

“The salad potatoes you see coming in from France and Spain look like something you’d see in a magazine,” she says. “It’s pure looks. High-class restaurants only deal in baby potatoes.”

She thinks it will be difficult to persuade young farmers to go into potato growing. Her 11-year-old daughter said to her recently, “I will never work like you do.” When they were growing on a bigger scale they employed Polish farm workers, but she now she pulls the cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli each day by hand. “We’re not making that much money, but we do love what we’re doing.”

North Cork used to be Kerr’s Pinks country, but Roosters are now three-quarters of her farm crop. Part of that is down to our aversion, as consumers, to muddy spuds. “If you wash a Kerr’s Pink today it doesn’t look good in a couple of days. A washed Rooster keeps well and will look good in a week.”

Irish potato growers produce about 400,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, almost all of which are consumed domestically. About half of the crop is sold to retailers; the remainder goes to the food-service industry and processors such as Largo Foods, which makes Tayto.

Potato traditionalists look down on the salad potato as a triumph of looks over flavour. One industry source is scathing. “At every wedding, what do you get? Only salad potatoes. They’re immersed in butter and dosed in salt because without that they don’t taste of anything.” In this world an ugly spud gets rejected no matter how it tastes. “A bit of scab or anything is unacceptable. You nearly have to grow the baby potatoes in velvet.”

Ireland has about 540 growers, but the bulk of the crop is grown by about 200. Only 15 Irish growers produce salad potatoes. The good news is that preliminary figures indicate that potato consumption might be going up.

Retail figures are expected to show shops sold about 180,000 tonnes of potatoes to Irish consumers this year, up from 162,000 tonnes in 2013. Once every 0.6 seconds someone buys potatoes in Ireland, according to Kantar, a retail-analysis firm.

Champion

One of them is Lilly Higgins, the

Irish Times

food writer and, now, one of the judges on

[ The Great Irish Bake Off ]

. Higgins was prompted to champion the potato earlier this year when her toddlers, who could identify pomegranates and avocados, asked if she was making an apple tart when they saw her peeling potatoes.

Wedges are her secret weapon to get children to eat more big, old-style potatoes. They are served at least twice a week. Once they’re washed and chopped, she rubs them with olive oil and roasts them on a really high heat. They cook in the same time it takes to cook frozen wedges.

“You just cut a large potato into six. They can wash the potatoes. It’s a great toddler activity,” she says, although she suspects that the organic potatoes have been tumbled in peat moss for effect, as their “dirt” looks suspiciously uniform.

As someone who once picked potatoes on her uncle’s farm for pocket money – “I was paid 20p a bag and used the money to buy my first pair of jeans” – Higgins is amazed by the convenience-potato market. “You can buy a bag and throw it directly into the microwave. So you won’t have touched it at all before it touches your mouth.”

Is the traditional muck-crusted spud going to disappear from shelves? Probably not, but more baby potatoes means more imported potatoes, which is not a pretty prospect for Irish vegetable growers.