Potato crisis in Belgium: "There is no worse news"

 

TT-AFP

Published 20.36

  

Grower Mathieu Comijn shows off unusually small potatoes that he dug up from his fields where this year's harvest has been hit hard by drought. Photo: John Thys/AFP/TT

Spring wet and summer drought are creating a Belgian potato crisis.

- How are you going to make fries out of these? sighs grower Mathieu Comijn.

When the AFP news agency visits him in Amay in eastern Belgium, he digs up potatoes as small as ping-pong balls.

- Normally they would be four times as big. It's a disaster. I've never seen anything like it, says Comijn.

The cause is an excessively wet spring followed by an extreme heat wave this summer. Fortunately, he and many others have not yet thrown away the mountains of potatoes left over from last year's record harvest.

The drought still has consequences for quality, price and size.

“Apart from illness in the royal family, there is probably no worse news for a Belgian than higher prices for fries,” says Bernard Lefèvre from the trade organization Unafri.