SWEET POTATO YIELDS HIT BY DRY SPELL
By Sheria Brathwaite
The drought-like conditions affecting Barbados and the rest of the region have resulted in a shortage of sweet potatoes.
And some plantations have capitalised on the opportunity to make more cash.
On Monday, chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) James Paul told Barbados TODAY that he received several reports from small farmers across the island that their sweet potato yield for the first quarter of the year had been greatly impacted by dry conditions.
He said the issue was not only affecting rain-fed farmers but those in irrigated areas as well.
“This year, the sweet potato crop was not as good in the first quarter and going into the second quarter. We are not seeing the type of production that we want to see so we are hoping that as we go into the other quarters we can stabilise and see some marginal increases at least,” he said.
“The main complaint from farmers has been the drought. In some cases, it was impacting on the production in that we were not having the rains, so you tend to find that the growth of the tuber was less than it should be. You need water in order for the tuber to increase in size but that wasn’t happening.”
Paul said farmers in the northern part of the island were being affected the most.
“We are hoping that the rains projected by the [Meteorological] Office will have a positive impact on the farms, as most of the complaints were from irrigated areas. Remember that farmers, especially in the Government-irrigated areas, have to ration their water and are only able to wet crops for four hours. Then, depending on the elevation of the land, the wetting of the crops is not as even; some portions of the ground get better access to water than others.
“So all of these things will determine the extent to which the crops develop to size and maturity,” he said.
Veteran farmer Richard Armstrong of Armag Farms, which has a retail outlet in Six Roads, St Philip, said the dry spell was also impacting him even though he was a large-scale farmer without water issues.
“I am still getting a reasonably good yield but it is costing a lot of money to get that yield because we have to use a lot more water and use a lot more fertiliser to help the plant through its stress period,” he said.
Armstrong noted that sweet potatoes were not as drought-resistant as widely believed.
“Sweet potatoes like a lot of water. Don’t let anybody fool you that sweet potato is a drought-resistant crop; you will get a vine but you wouldn’t get a sweet potato.
“In the first six to eight weeks of a sweet potato crop and it does not get wet all of the time, it will grow the wrong root. It will produce a surface root as it would be searching for water rather than producing a tuber. And even if it gets rain at a later stage of its life, it still won’t yield as much as it would if it got rain and water earlier on in its life. For the first eight weeks of its life it needs a fairly consistent supply,” Armstrong said.
“Even for me with water supply, the drought conditions makes it extremely expensive to get good yields. The water is going straight through the soil; it isn’t sticking around long so you have to continuously pump water on them,” he added.
However, plantation manager at Edgcumbe Plantation in St Philip, Richard Mayers said he was not having any issues and, in fact, was getting more returns for his product due to the scarcity.
The veteran in farming said: “I sold sweet potatoes this morning and they sold out in two hours. I have a well and three rain guns [sprinklers] so I don’t struggle when it comes to getting my sweet potatoes wet.
“My programme since last year was planting sweet potatoes every five weeks and I am still on target. I don’t want to rush and plant a lot of acres and then flood the market and can’t get mine off. Right now, the scarcity is working in my favour. Early last month I sold five acres at $40 per rod, then I sold four acres at $50 per rod and then I sold about an acre this morning at $60 per rod. I had over 300 people this morning,” Mayers disclosed.
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