CHANGING tastes have been blamed for a £100 million collapse in sales of Scottish tatties last year.
Despite the humble potato's essential role in ever popular dishes such as haggis, neeps and tatties and the fish supper, a switch to rice and pasta mashed sales last year.
Combined with a bumper potato harvest across Northern Europe, it pushed down prices and wiped 38 per cent off the value of spud sales, contributing to a slump in Scottish farming.
The news prompted calls for Scots to tuck into more spuds.
Dr Rob Clayton, director of the Potato Council, said: "Recent changes in consumption have affected all developed nations.
"It's vital potatoes remain a staple on Scottish plates.
"Although potatoes command over 80 per cent of the carbohydrates at retail level, in the last decade the market place has become crowded with competitive products."
He said the council's mission is to fight make potatoes on supermarket shelves "interesting and inspiring."
Official figures showed potato sales plummeted by £105m to £170m.
The dramatic fall contributed to a slump in Scottish agriculture, as total farm income dropped 18 per cent from £823m to £688m.
UK consumption began to stabilise towards the end of the year.
Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead said: "There was a good potato harvest but a fall in consumer demand has seen a challenging year for the potato sector."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article