§ Miss Quennellasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps his Department is taking to promote the marketing of surplus potatoes for the manufacture of starch.
§ Mr. HoyAt present, none. Starch is not manufactured from potatoes in this country. A potato starch industry would obviously need a source of raw material more reliable than the irregular and intermittent surpluses of potatoes grown for human consumption.
We discussed this as a possible method of surplus disposal with the Potato Marketing Board in 1966 but did not find it promising. We shall return to it in the discussions with the Board and the National Farmers' Unions mentioned in paragraph 55 of the recent Annual Review White Paper (Cmnd. 3558).