Mallee shortfall adds to spud sparsity

WORDS BRIDGET O’DRISCOLL

Dry conditions affecting salty soils have hit Mallee potato growers hard, and will potentially affect prices and stocks until the end of 2025, according to Pye Group potato operations manager, Lachlan Pye.

“Things are sort of getting progressively worse as we are getting to the end of our old season crops,” Mr Pye said.

“This stuff was planted in the Mallee in January and February, and we’re finishing harvest on that by about the end of October.

“Then we’ll move onto our Virginia crops north of Adelaide, which are our new season crops.”

Mr Pye said yields are down by around 20 to 30 per cent, putting pressure on supply chains.

“It’s been pretty challenging… we work on a budget and estimate that we are going to get certain yields, but they just don’t seem to go north at all, they just keep going south,” he said.

“We’re trying to count every potato we’ve got really, to try and fulfil all of our orders.”

The main culprit, he said, has been the lack of rainfall.

“A lot of our late-planted crops are on bores which are quite salty,” Mr Pye said.

“Through March and April, we really bank on getting a rainfall event to wash the salt through the soil, and obviously that just didn’t happen. So the salt has stayed in the soil and has affected the growth.”

The result is smaller potatoes and some salt damage, compounded by hot conditions that “really sort of batter the spuds around.”

While major supermarket contracts remain in place, quality standards have been temporarily eased.

“Woolworths and Coles have probably lessened how hard their specifications are,” he said. “The consumer is probably not going to be getting a lot of perfect, ‘golden egg’ potatoes.”

At the same time, market potato prices, those sold through greengrocers and independent retailers, are at record levels.

“Our objective is to fill all our supermarket contracts first, then whatever is left we’ll sell to the market,” Mr Pye said.

“We, along with our competitors, have been able to capitalise on the pricing, which might make up for the money we’re missing out on in the field because of the loss of yield.”

Attention is now turning north, where the Virginia crops planted in April, May and June, are beginning to come through.

“They’re looking sort of okay at this stage,” he said. “It’s quite challenging growing spuds in Virginia over winter with the cold conditions, so we’re probably expecting an average year down there.”

But the shortage is expected to continue until at least December, when the next Mallee crops are due to be harvested.

“The whole market is going to be tired until before Christmas,” Mr Pye said.
“We’re really dependent on those rain events over summer and into March, April and May, and we hope that we are going to get more rain, not just for our crops but for the whole Mallee region, and other regions around the state.”

Despite the tough season, there’s still a sense of cautious optimism.

“Our crops for December and January are sort of all on track,” he said. “We’re hoping that we can sort of flip the script a little bit on the yields.”