Hansard

I am certainly pleased to contribute to this debate, and I thank Claire Baker for bringing it to the chamber and allowing us to highlight the great Scottish spud’s many benefits to our health and the economy.

I have a long association with the great Scottish spud. I grew Kerr’s Pinks on the family farms up in Stornoway for the Outer Hebridean market, where their floury dry texture goes so well with local delicacies such as salt herring and guga. Guga, of course, is salt baby gannet, and it is something for which, half a century on from being born on the Isle of Lewis, l have still not managed to acquire a taste. I can say that without worrying about damaging the guga industry, as demand greatly exceeds supply.

My association with the humble spud continued when I trained as a livestock auctioneer with United Auctions in Stirling, where we would regularly hold seed potato sales and where I learned about hundreds of varieties that I had never heard of before. As a trainee auctioneer, I would, after the sale, have to phone in the sale report to The Herald, The Scotsman, The Press and Journal and The Courier. As that was in the days before e-mail and fax, I had to spell out each of the varieties to the copy girls, and I now have varieties such as Desiree, Pentland Javelin, Osprey and Russet Burbank etched on my mind. I am also sure that there are many retired copy girls out there who are extremely relieved at no longer having to type endless lists of potato varieties for hours on end.

Potatoes with colourful names such as Pimpernel, Galactica, Fontane, Asterix and Sylvana are just a few of the 700 varieties held by the Scottish Government in its national potato collection.