The true cost of blight?

UK - June 11, 2004

The cost of a blight fungicide is not a priority feature, providing the product works well, according to research of farmers and advisors conducted by Dow AgroSciences. Price was only fifth in the list of features of a blight fungicide.

“Farmers and advisors know full well how important it is to protect their crops from blight, right from the start through to harvest, and they are prepared to invest in the crop in order to provide this protection. Potato blight can be a devastating disease, causing up to 40% yield loss and severe problems of tuber quality. The cost of a blight program is small when compared to the risk of the disease and when you consider the overall costs of growing the crop.” Says John Sellars, Product Manager for Dow AgroSciences.

“The number of blight sprays in the last two years has averaged between ten to eleven treatments per crop, depending on risk. If growers use a ten-spray program of one of the less expensive blight products, the total cost would be around £50 per hectare. If we calculate the overall variable cost of growing potatoes — taken from John Nix’s 2004 Farm Management Pocketbook — seed is around £500 per hectare, fertiliser £200/ha, total sprays £400/ha, casual labour for grading and harvesting £625/ha and sundries such as the levy and sacks £400 per hectare. This comes to a total variable cost of £2,125 per hectare. A less expensive 10 spray programme would be a mere 2% of this cost. Even if you went to a more robust and expensive program costing around £15 per treatment or £150 for total protection, this is still only 7% of the variable costs.” calculates John.

“This year with more buoyant potato prices of between £100 and £280/tonne and with an average of, say, £177/tonne plus good average yield of 48 tonnes per hectare, the £50 blight programme would work out to be as little as half a percent of the overall output and the £150 programme less than 2% of the output.”

“In the survey that we conducted, we asked farmers and advisors what were the top three essential features of a blight fungicide. The results show that they are concentrating on the best blight treatments — the ones that provide high levels of blight control (selected by 60% of respondents as being the most important feature), products that are rainfast (38% of respondents), products that are persistent (34%) and those that have curative activity (31%). Price was mentioned by 30% of respondents. If we just took the first feature that was mentioned top of mind, then only 3% interviewed thought that price was the most important factor. Clearly blight is seen as a major threat and growers are prepared to put together a robust and effective blight program to keep their crops clean.” reports John Sellars.