Come scoop potatoes from the potato mountain
Potato farmers are left with barns full of potatoes that the hospitality industry will not be buying in the coming period. So what now? Slow Food Youth is creating potato mountains at twelve locations in the Netherlands, where everyone can come and buy potatoes. ‘And this amount is only the tip of the potato mountain,’ says initiator Jur Jacobs.
Due to the loss of demand for fries from the hospitality industry and the halted exports, potato farmers are left with an enormous surplus of spuds. What are they supposed to do with them? The potatoes are sometimes bought up for biogas or animal feed, but that brings in amounts far below the cost price. Moreover, it causes enormous food waste. Slow Food Youth disagreed with this. A few weeks ago, initiator Jur Jacobs had an enormous pile of potatoes dumped in Amsterdam. With it, he drew attention to the potato problem and, as a bonus, everyone could buy the potatoes directly from the farmers. Within six hours, the entire mountain of 20,000 kilos of potatoes was gone.
Angry farmer Astrid
Earlier, potato farmer Astrid from the Beemster region sought attention for her potato harvest. She had agreements with Deen, but the supermarket preferred to buy potatoes from abroad. Astrid was furious and dumped a mountain of potatoes in front of the supermarket’s distribution center. Everything was talked through, and Astrid’s potatoes are now in a prominent place in the vegetable section, but there are many more potato farmers like Astrid who, at their wits’ end, are wondering what should happen to those spuds. Earlier, they called on people to eat plenty of fries, so the potatoes would not go to waste.
Tip of the potato mountain
That is why potato mountains will be dumped on Saturday, June 27, in Eindhoven, Utrecht, Haarlem, Lelystad and Amsterdam, as well as seven other locations. Via the Too Good To Go app and the Aardappelberg website, you can see where the spuds are. Jur: ‘It’s a shame that all that good food is being wasted. I wanted to take action to help these farmers and make sure this food does not become waste. I think it is important that people see with their own eyes how large the food surplus is, even though this is only the tip of the potato mountain.’
