New farm joins strategic potato farms network
I am pleased to announce that Gatley Farms based in Gatley Estate, Leominster, has now officially joined our Strategic Potato Farms (SPot) network.
The farm is run by James Oliver who is a former agri-agronomist. James took over in July from his predecessor Stuart Hutchings, growing 350 acres of potatoes including varieties such as Piper, Burbank and Nectar.
As an ex-agronomist James has a good understanding of the problems the industry faces and has very up-to-date knowledge of the potato sector. James is interested in improving productivity over production and looking into new ways of best practice moving forward.
Topics of interest include storage, and loss of current pesticides such as mancozeb. As well as this Gatley Farms grows a range of other combinable crops as well as a herd of beef cattle. I hope potato growers from Shropshire will be able to make the short journey to James’ farm to attend events and demonstrations in the summer.
For the growers interested in hearing more about our SPot farms programme, I would like to remind them that in January we will present the findings of our SPot farms 2020 trials during a week of online events. To find out more please visit ahdb.org.uk/SPotWeek
Alex Wade, AHDB Potatoes
