The 2024 French Potato Harvest Could Be the Highest in 30 Years
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food projects that the French harvest of mid-season and storage potatoes for consumption will total 7.6m tons in 2024, the most in 30 years.
Unquestionably, it was a very strong year, with annual production predicted to rise by 16.6% over the average of the preceding five years.
“Due to the harvest delays this year, the final figures for the last harvests must be further consolidated,” the ministry specifies, cited by Jérémy Bruno from BFM Business.
The French Ministry of Agriculture and Food emphasizes that in order to meet these expanded production capacities, an extra 1.5m tons of potatoes will be needed by 2027–2028, “with additional availability required from autumn 2024 to supply the gradual ramp-ups in 2025.” From this vantage point, despite the intense winter rains, the cultivated lands for table potatoes grew by over 16% in 2024, from 154,000 hectares to 178,000 hectares from year to year.
Meanwhile, table potatoes profited from the lack of interest in starch potatoes, which saw harvests of 460,000 tons in 2024, a 48.6% decrease from the five-year average. Due to a decline in demand, farmed lands decreased by 6,000 hectares from the year before, reaching 11,000 hectares in 2024. The Haussimont starch factory in Marne, one of the last two in France, was set to close in August 2023, according to the Tereos group, because no buyer could be found.
