Variable planting distances seed potatoes rewarding.
In the past 4 years a number of farmers in the Northern part of the Netherlands have tested GPS based within-field
variable planting distances for planting seed potatoes. During planting, the planting distance was varied automatically
with soil texture. The Soil Company has collected and analysed the results of these “variable planting distance tests”
in a report. The results show that variable planting distances cause a 4 % yield increase. This equals a financial gain
of 240 to 470 euro per hectare. This is abundant to compensate the necessary investments.
On 18th January the results were presented to the farmers involved and other invitees. The people present were pleasantly
surprised by the results. This is partly due to the many factors whose influence on the yield of seed potatoes is not yet
known. The fact that nonetheless during several years a positive and profitable result was obtained offers a promising
outlook for the future. Ongoing optimisation of the technique and agronomic knowledge will surely lead to a further
improvement of financial gain when using variable planting distances for seed potatoes.
The complete resultreport you can find here. The report is in Dutch for now,
so if you have additional questions or inquiries please feel free to contact The Soil Company.