 And I like how you just mentioned the technicalities around sprouting and on the fact that we also need to farm potatoes with irrigation because you know without water farming does become a little bit tricky, especially with high value crops such as potatoes. So, you know, we've had a lot of rains around December January February period. And with your knowledge and maybe the farmers that you've worked with, how have they mitigated the risk? Good day, podcasters. Thank you so much for joining the private property farming podcast, bringing to you yet another episode of the farming podcast discussing all things agriculture. As I always mentioned on the show is that if you have any topics, comments, questions that you want to share with us, please do reach out to us right here on the farming podcast, you're catching us live on YouTube and we're happy to engage with you. And obviously explore topics that you want to hear about. Let us unpack it with our experts guests. And this is what the podcast is for at the end of the day. So today we have Mr. Andre Dutoy joining us and he's the manager at Bayer Crop Division. At the top of today, we're going to be focusing on potato farming. You know, how do you make profit out of potatoes? How do you farm potatoes, the pros and cons of farming potatoes, or maybe broadening it a little bit into vegetable farming. If you don't know about Bayer, I guess you should take out your laptop, your phone and just Google them. They're a big international company that deals with crop protection, pesticides, a lot of varieties. And I think Andre is going to be able to unpack some of their services and what they do, particularly in his portfolio. And let's just tap into his expertise. Just to learn more about potato farming, the pros and cons around vegetable farming, how do we make a profit out of it? How do we grow farming enterprises to become profitable over and above the pressures that we as farmers face and maybe tap into the value chain as well. So if you have any questions, like always to Mr. Andre, please feel free to comment. Let's get straight into it and introduce Andre. Andre, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing? Molly, thank you very much now. I'm doing well. Yes, just thank you for that introduction. My title with Bayer is the go-to market manager for potatoes and vegetables in South Africa. So yes, I'm glad to be on your show today. Happiness, happiness. So firstly, maybe just explain to us what does Bayer, what does the company Bayer do? And specifically when you're saying you're the go-to market manager, what does that exactly mean? Well, yes, Bayer is a very big company, a global company. We are in pharmaceuticals. We're in seed and we're in crop science as well. So yes, my responsibility is the development of strategy and alignment of the salespeople in field to align with our strategy. For the future and so on. So yes, the go-to market strategy leader is somebody that is very knowledgeable in the field of his expertise and he or her sort of showed a way for the future and that is in short my responsibility with Bayer at this stage. Fantastic. So today we mentioned that we're going to talk about potato farming because I believe that it's also your area of expertise. So maybe just break it down to us. You know, if one wants to venture into potato farming, what type of land science should I be considering? What are the best regions to farm potatoes and how does one make a success out of potato farming? Umbali, yes. Potatoes in South Africa is planted right through the season, right through from summer, right through the winter. There's always somebody that plant potatoes and somebody that harvest fresh potatoes. So we're in a fortunate position that, you know, there is certain areas in South Africa that they plant potatoes like in Lumpur, in the Halting area, Western Free State, and Cozzullo Natal, and down in the Western Cape. Okay, you asked me what is the important thing about potatoes. Say for instance, if you want to start with potatoes, the first thing is that you have to do your research. All potatoes fit in that area. Is it suitable to plant your potatoes in that area? Is the soil suitable to plant potatoes? What is the best and the diseases that can attack your potatoes? And lastly is also the end of the day, you have to send your final product to the fresh produce market or to the processors or one of those markets. So you have to investigate those markets. But because the end of the day, you have to make money to produce, to plant potatoes. Potatoes is very expensive. They vary it from 100,000 rand a acre up to 200,000 to 250,000 rand a acre. So it's very, very expensive. So you can't afford to make a mistake. So my first, to answer your question, first of all, do your own work. See if it will fit into your rotation, fit in your form. And another thing is with potatoes, we always say you need the implements you need. You have to have a plant, you have to have an irrigation, you have to have a lifter, you have to have a sprayer, and lastly you have to have a sorting space where you can sort your potatoes. So it is a high input cost. Secondly, I will say start small and grow into it so that if you make a mistake, it's on a smaller scale and you don't have a, you know, you manage your risk on a smaller scale as well. That's where if you open the gates and you start and you plant big hectares, you know, the risk is just high and your input cost is very, very high in potatoes. Yes, and then there's quite a few things other than that you can make use of. There's a lot of expertise in the field. You know, your distribution companies that distribute chemicals and fertilizers and so on, they have very knowledgeable people in the specific areas that will guide you to make a success if you want to start to plant potatoes. Another thing is whether potato grower must take in consideration is remember you plant seed potatoes and that is a tuber that is produced by a seed grower and always buy certified seed because there is a guarantee on certified seed that you also as part of your whole process can manage the risk at the end of the day. Okay, and then lastly is potatoes is economical or scale. You have to have a high yield and high quality of potatoes marked at the right time at the right market to get the right, the best price for your potatoes. It sounds very technical, you know, everything that you're saying about. Yes, your advice is to say start small so that, you know, when you do fail, at least, you don't lose as much in your investment, as opposed to going big. And I like how you just mentioned the technicalities around sprouting around the fact that we also need to farm potatoes with irrigation, because you know without water farming does become a little bit tricky, especially with high value crops, such as potatoes. So, you know, we've had a lot of rains around December, January, February period. And with with your knowledge and maybe the farmers that you've worked with, how have they mitigated the risks or still kept their farm businesses in survival mode rather in survival mode, with all these climate change, different variables happening in various parts of the provinces in the country. Molly, yes. The potato farmer, he must watch the weather, because potatoes is very acceptable in chains of weather patterns. And if you just look at the spray program, and if you see there is a coat from coming in of a lot of rain, you must spray preventative for certain diseases. And my advice to a farmer is, do not wait until the disease or the pest is on the farm. Create or develop a spray program that is preventative. A good measurement is what you do before flowering, determine your success after flowering. So, yes, in Bayer, we have quite a, we have a very nice portfolio to make provision for all the different pests and diseases that you can pick up during the growing season. If I can just start at when you plant. At planting, there's a big problem with two things that you must keep in mind. First of all, is nematodes. So we have a product with the name of Willem Prime, that control nematodes. And the second one there is Emester Sauber, it's one of our new products that we will launch, we busy launching it. And that control risetonia. Those two products play a vital role in the appearance of your potato that you want to sell to the housewife. The potatoes is well researched, the products is well researched. And if you use it according to the label, you will have good results. So we cover the planting and what's happening under the soil. And secondly, when the potatoes start to grow, then there's fungus diseases that can attack your potatoes and there is certain insects that can attack your potatoes. And therefore, we have a good portfolio, we have antrochlor, folic acid, nativo infinito for the fungus diseases. And then we have diseases, bulldog and belt to control your moth diseases. And there's other companies that also supply products to control, for instance, leaf miner. We can't supply everything to the potato growers. So you have to make use of other companies that support the spraying program during the season. Okay, come back to your original question about the weather and so on. Yes, weather is a critical factor. If you have too much rain, your fertilizer leach out and your plant comes under stress and then they develop certain diseases and so on. So you always have to measure what happened with the weather and what you're going to do during the growing season. So if you look at the growing season of potatoes, there's anything between three or four to five months that the potatoes grow. And you have to make provision for your pests and your diseases every seven to ten days you have to spray. And that's part of the why input cost at the end of the day. Okay, the weather is also important, especially in the eastern free state where there is quite a bit of dryland plantings that are taking place. So those farmers depend on rain. Okay, they don't have irrigation where you can just switch it on and say there's water. So they depend for water that we blessed in South Africa. Yes, that's a risk. So my advice is to eastern free state farmers is you know your farm. You know where your best lands is and you know also what is the water capacity in your land. Use them for potatoes. Due to the fact that you manage the risk the whole time. Yes, to conclude Mali from Bayer, we try to advise our farmers to look out, look at the weather and make a management decision in connection with the agents in the field to prevent anything that can happen during that time where the weather change or you have lots of rain or all those things. So yes Mali we try to advise our farmers to be successful. Fantastic and sticking on to that advice Andre at the start of the production season do you go out do you work with the farmers to say this is how your soil analysis looks like maybe instead of planting a plant population of 100,000. We need to maybe do 80 you know or maybe go to 120. Do you also assist the farmers with the growing program around pesticide management. Yes, we in Bayer we specialized in crop protection. There is some other companies like your fertilizer companies that do the soil analysis and then they recommend the correct fertilizer and blend and and so on for the farmer. Then there's a seed companies that advise the farmer with seed and which cultivar to use and every area have let's call it a set of rules where you know that you have to plant your plant population have to be that so many plants per hectare and then you will produce a very high yield. A form by your side for us is that we give a lot of training for our agents in the field we empower them with knowledge and we give them. Excess to sell our products in the field that they can with the help of the assistance of of our area managers in in the different areas that knows the area knows exactly what to do then they develop a crop protection program for the farmer but it is not costing stone. Remember what I said about the weather so you have you have something that you can work on but you can change it during the season as a certain problems arise and and you have to make provision for certain things. And that's the role of Bayer in the protection of potatoes. Yeah, tell me Andre do you guys work with industry associations because as you're talking I also was reminded that Oh, there's a potato South Africa Association. Do you work with the industry Association maybe to bring in maybe with your partners like the seed partners good varieties. Do you guys engage with the Association to say these are the right pesticides. You know for this season maybe from your research and development because I know that organizations like yourselves pride themselves with the quality of inputs that you sell out to the market. So my question is, do you work with industry associations like Potato South Africa to give them expert advice on how to successfully grow this commodity. Bali is potatoes at Africa and potato certification services is a very, very important partner for us, due to the fact that we use their plot platforms to introduce new innovation, innovation. We introduce our new chemistry we communicate with our farmers, but we, we in a partnership that we use their platform or we sponsor platforms that we can can can communicate to our farmers out there. Another important part is what potato certification and potatoes at Africa play is that they have information available and as a strategic manager for me is important to. If you don't measure you can't manage you know so we use the, the platforms where they publicize on on on potatoes at Africa way website or certification website, we use this information to manage in South Africa. You asked me about seed. Potato seeds, we don't have anything to do with potato seed in South Africa. There's other companies that specialized in that. One thing that the potatoes at Africa have certain work groups in different areas, and we use those work groups to demonstrate Saifu instance a buyer product or buyer spray program or new innovation. And the information that we gather on on on work group level is fantastic for a farmer because it's information that he can use in his area and he gets specific answers for his problem and he can manage risk with this information that we, we collect in in this. There's not a strange relationship but everybody might use of this those platforms and work groups to communicate with our client at the end of the day and client is our farmers. Absolutely, absolutely. As I let go of your under I think you've just, you know unpacked this specific commodity quite technically, and it's not a, it's not. It's not a conversation we have every single day and you've literally displayed the intricacies around potato farming and I guess this is the reason why there's not so many players farming potatoes, because yes it is a big staple crop. It's a very important one around the South African landscape, but also it's very difficult to master. So maybe leave us with a fun fact, you know, from your knowledge. Do you know how big, do you know any big potato farmers in South Africa, you don't have to mention their names but maybe just give us a fun fact of the biggest potato producer is producing on how many hectares of lands. Yes, that is. Yes, we have very big seed growers in the Western Free State area. They produce a lot in high quality of seed and then we have very big potato growers in the Eastern Free State, Rhode Island growers that produce anything between 300 and 400 to 500 hectares at a time. And then in the book we have farmers there between 200 and 400 hectares as well that produce potatoes for South Africa, but my message to anybody that eat a potato is I have respect for that potato because there's a lot of work and knowledge and the risk and input cost that go into producer potato. It's such a fantastic commodity and it gives so many people in South Africa jobs and so it is just a very exciting industry to be in. And for my potato farmers, the one thing that I can tell them is all the best for the growing season, make provision for the things that you don't know what can happen, prevention is always better than care. And, you know, your success is our success. And from by your side, we have a big team or a very knowledgeable team in the field that can assist you so that you can be successful at the end of the day. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Andre, for your time. That was a fantastic conversation. And yeah, you've left me with that note to say, now we must all have respect for mashed potatoes, our sweet potatoes, and also our chips that we consume for consumers around the country. So yeah, it's a different message that you put out there. But trust me next time I interchip, I will think of that far main mind. Thank you Amole. Really appreciate it. And I really enjoyed talking to you. Likewise. That was Andre Dutoy, the go-to market manager from Bayer Crop Division. And we were discussing and maybe slightly unpacking down the potato industry, basically getting to know from his advice, how many hectares one should start with. And he mentioned also, besides land, it's critical to have the right equipment, the right mechanization to be able to plant your potatoes, weed the areas around your potatoes, and more importantly, harvest the potatoes because it's quite a delicate crop. It needs special care and attention. And he mentioned that the rough or average input cost per hectare is about 100,000 and it can go all the way about up to 200,000 per hectare. So you have to make sure that if you're investing in such a niche commodity, make sure that you have your ducks in the row. Reach out to the Bayer team who could assist you from a pesticide management perspective. And also work with your seed rips, work with your chemical rips to really help you come up with a very tight growing program that will help you also mitigate your risk once you start your production. That's it for me. Like I said, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and continue to like, subscribe in our YouTube channel and continue to support the farming podcast. See you next week.