Archive Article: 2000/09/29
A monthly column remembering days
gone by
September 1988
POTATOES were big. Big news, that is.
The Potato Marketing Board (remember that…) held its harvesting and handling demo at Oulton, Norfolk. But an Austrian salad potato with a strange name and a "yuppie" image was the main talking point in some circles. The first commercial samples of the second-early variety, Linzer Delikatess, was making £350/t, compared with a London wholesale price for white potatoes of £65/t.
"Their shape is as unusual as the name – as they are like long, squashed bananas," said one potato merchant of the variety.
Spuds also came under the spotlight in farmer weeklys Farmlife section. "Watching your weight need not make eating dull," a cookery piece insisted. "You dont have to live on a lettuce leaf and you certainly dont have to spurn the humble spud."
Barn conversions, meanwhile, were all the rage. But such projects, while sorting out the overdraft, werent without a risk and could bring trouble, warned the NFU.
Having paid large sums for the barn and its conversion buyers often think they can control their immediate environment – and farmers could find their new neighbours trying to call a halt to their everyday jobs.
Sheep farmers faced problems returning dipping forms on time in the wake of a postal dispute. The onus was on them, not the Post Office, to ensure forms arrived giving five days notice of intended dipping. The penalty for breaching the scab control regulations was a £2000 fine.
The strike may have been causing problems across the country, but FW readers were given a special hot-line on which to ring through their letters.