Islandia: Improved late summer weather saves potato crop

They are now heading for an acceptable harvest after the cold season well into the summer.

Potato farmer Sigurbjart Pálsson said this during a live broadcast on Stöðvar 2’s news in the potato field in Rangárvallasýsla. The outlook for potatoes in Þykkvabær was not good here until after the summer. About 70 percent of the country’s potato production comes from this region.

Visir.is quoted Sigurbjartur as saying: “It was a cold and difficult spring and I never thought it would warm up. The weather has been good this summer, but it was just always so cold. And the first part of August was just the coldest in my memory.“ Sigurbjartur, grows potatoes with his wife, Jóhanna Lilja Þrúðmarsdóttir, and his son Ómar Páll.

“If you had asked me in mid-August what it would be like, I would have been very pessimistic. But today we are harvesting a great crop,” said Sigurbjartur. He would not go so far as to say this is a great year for potatoes, but he added: “I wouldn’t call it that. But it’s an acceptable crop and we can’t complain.”