Field delivery period exposes weakness in potato market

The potato harvest is in full swing. The harvest is very poor, but there is no tension on the free market. Fontane remains stuck at €20 per 100 kilo in Belgium and France. In the Netherlands, quotes are slowly moving in the same direction. This confirms a pattern this season that also emerges from price developments in previous years: September and October are often not the strongest months for the free grower to sell potatoes. Belgapom is keeping Fontane at €20 per 100 kilo this week. Strikingly, the organization describes market sentiment as 'price-supportive', which means that supply is smaller than or equal to demand. Viaverda/Fiwap also does not go beyond €20. There, the market is described as stable. Both demand and supply of free potatoes are limited. Most transactions concern overtonnes/co-delivery potatoes on top of contracts. France is in line with this. RNM also quotes Fontane at €20 per 100 kilo. This creates a fairly uniform price picture in Belgium and France. Germany still deviates from that. Reka Rheinland also quotes Fontane as stable, but at a clearly higher level of €23 per 100 kilo. PotatoNL drops toward 20 euro In the Netherlands, the market is meanwhile moving further and further toward the Belgian and French level. At the end of September, PotatoNL quoted Fontane and similar round fry varieties at €20 to €23 per 100 kilo. A week earlier that was still €21 to €24 and in mid-September €22 to €24. At the beginning of September, €22 to €24 was on the board. That produces a remarkable price trend. At the end of August, the Dutch range was still €20 to €25. Since then, especially the upper end has eroded. There is no sudden price collapse. The market is being pushed downward in small steps instead. That fits well with what often happens historically during the field delivery period. An analysis of Fontane quotations over multiple seasons shows that September, October and the first half of November often show relatively little price movement. During this period, potatoes come off the land in large volumes, while processors are supplied to a significant extent from their field delivery contracts. That limits the need to actively buy free potatoes. The free grower is therefore in a relatively weak negotiating position precisely at the moment when the physical supply is at its highest. Up after the field delivery period The historical Belgapom quotations make this visible. Over the eight seasons from 2018/19 through 2025/26, the average Fontane price after the field delivery period was in six seasons higher than during the period from late August through the first two weeks of November. The difference is often substantial. In 2021/22, Fontane after field delivery averaged around €12 per 100 kilo, compared with about €18.50 in the period after that. In 2022/23 it was more than €24 versus almost €35. The difference was even larger in 2023/24: an average of just under €12 after field delivery versus almost €35 later in the season. The median of the price difference over the eight seasons studied is about 36% in favor of the period after mid-November. Other quotations show a similar picture. At Reka Rheinland, the average Fontane price in seven of the eight seasons studied was higher after the field delivery period. At least as striking is how little sometimes happens during the harvest. In 2021, Belgapom hovered around €12 throughout almost the entire field delivery period. In 2024, €12.50 remained on the board for weeks. Last season, €1.50 was even more extreme. A low price therefore does not automatically mean a quick upward reaction follows. This year is no different So far, 2026 has had the same character. The special thing is that there does not even have to be an abundance of free potatoes. Viaverda/Fiwap actually speaks of little supply and little demand. Field delivery contracts are being supplied in full and overtonnes and free potatoes are only being taken in limited quantities. That is all the more striking because the Belgian harvest is small. The latest trial lifting by Viaverda, Fiwap and Carah came to a net yield of 38.2 tonnes per hectare for Fontane. Never before in eighteen years of trial lifting has such a low yield been measured. Moreover, the grading is fine. A small harvest alone therefore appears insufficient to cause a price increase during the field delivery period. As long as processors can supply their factories largely with contract potatoes and show little interest in additional free volume, there is no competition for the potatoes. Storage is no guarantee of profit That does not mean that storing potatoes is automatically the better choice. The higher prices later in the season must be weighed against storage costs, weight loss, interest and quality risks. In addition, there is always the risk that the expected price increase will not happen. The past two seasons show both sides of that risk. In 2023/24, the free market ultimately rose very strongly after the harvest. In 2025/26, the opposite happened. During the field delivery period, Belgapom quoted an average of about €1.50 and after that the market even fell toward €1. So storage is no guarantee of returns. Still, the historical figures do say something about the grower's position. Anyone who has to sell in September or October is doing so precisely at the moment when supply from the harvest is large and processors are receiving many contract potatoes. The need for buyers to bid against each other is then limited. The first weeks of November historically bring little change in that. They behave more like the final stage of the field delivery period than like the start of a real storage market. Only when the direct supply from the land dries up can the balance between buyer and seller change. This year follows historical pattern For now, 2026 fits that historical pattern remarkably well. Belgium and France are at €20, PotatoNL is moving step by step toward that level and only Reka Rheinland still maintains some distance at €23. Despite the small harvest, the market is thus so far unable to really break loose during the most important harvest months. The paradox of the field delivery market is therefore visible again: precisely when the potatoes become available and the grower has to decide whether to sell or store, his position on the free market is historically often the weakest.