Kent Food & Drink Business of the Year Winner: Provenance Potatoes
Provenance Potatoes celebrates its tenth birthday this year – 10 years of providing agronomic and marketing advice to Kent farmers and a decade of supplying top-quality Kent potatoes to all its customers.
Provenance Potatoes celebrates its tenth birthday this year – 10 years of providing agronomic and marketing advice to Kent farmers and a decade of supplying top-quality Kent potatoes to all its customers.
Provenance Potatoes incorporates sustainability at the very core of all we do; from the recyclable packaging to the reduction of transportation to reduce carbon emissions, we are a business that looks carefully at all stages of the value chain to minimise our environmental impact. As a business, we are now Carbon Neutral(Scopes 1, 2 and elements of 3) and are working hard to decarbonise up and downstream in our supply chain.
Our motto of ‘every tuber counts still holds true and we find a home for all our potatoes; big or small, round or oval, with every kind of skin finish. Tubers with green areas or rots are fed to local cattle to produce milk and beef and the not so pretty but still very tasty tubers go to the Cook kitchen in Sittingbourne. Finding a home for every size, shape or skin finish is vital in reducing food waste
within the supply chain. Even with all the planning involved we sometimes find ourselves with pallets of spuds returned or excess to orders - these are donated to local food banks.
As part of the collective drive to reduce our carbon footprint we have been using the Cool Farm Tool to help us and our growers understand how positive steps can be taken to minimise our environmental impact. The Cool Farm Tool is an online greenhouse gas, water and biodiversity calculator for farmers. It has shown us how, by reducing tillage and adding cover crops on our farmers’ fields, we can decrease and offset problem emissions while building soil health. Our growers' farms are no further than 17 miles from our pack house and many of our customers are based in Kent, keeping food miles to the minimum.
To help increase biodiversity in the potato fields, we continue to provide pollinator mix to our farmers. The mixes are planted on uncultivated land and not only look attractive but provide essential pollen and nectar for pollinator species and beneficial insects as well as helping to improve soil structure.
