Two years ago, it was in dire straits due to drought. Here is the potato, today, promised to see its production double in the fields by 2030, going from 1.6 million to more than 3 million tonnes. That is 300 to 400 km2 of additional cultivated land. The reason? The establishment of new frozen fries factories in the northern territory, as told The World.
Last year, the Belgian group Clarebout launched its production in Bourbourg, near Dunkirk. A little further south, in Escaudoeuvres, near Cambrai, another Belgian giant, Agristo (formerly Agrigel), is currently building its factory on the site of a former sugar factory, symbol of the transfer of power between beet sugar and potato. Here, the first fries should be released in 2027.
After twenty years of industrial inactivity
In the Somme, Ecofrost, still Belgian, plans to produce, from 2026, 100,000 tonnes of fries on the former Flodor potato chip manufacturing site, in Péronne. The Belgian group even plans to double this production for 2030.
Added to this manufacturing bulimia is the Canadian McCain, whose factories are already established in Harnes and Béthune, in Pas-de-Calais. The company is investing to increase from 260,000 to 380,000 tonnes of finished products. Don’t throw any more away, the cone is full!
For Bertrand Ouillon, general delegate of the Interprofessional Group for the Development of Potatoes, “this news is received with enormous interest”. Especially since this sudden enthusiasm for the potato industry comes after twenty years “where nothing happened”, according to him.
The risk of climate change
Will the Hauts-de-France region, which is home to nearly two thirds of national production, be able to grow even more potatoes? For Fermes en vie, an agricultural property company financing agricultural land through citizen savings, “we will have to go about it reasonably, not get carried away and find ourselves overproducing”.
Especially since the potato is an “increasingly risky crop given climate change”, estimates Geoffroy d’Evry, president of the National Union of Potato Producers, interviewed by the daily.
Requested by 20 Minutestwo years ago, the potato manager at the Hauts-de-France Chamber of Agriculture, Benoît Houilliez, also admitted that climatic hazards were a “thorny issue” to manage. And to emphasize: “We are looking for the five-legged sheep, between resistance to mildew, consumer desires and the intransigence of industrial specifications. »
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