"Farmers are really affected by the drought, especially in this part of the country – I think 2mm of rain fell in the whole month of July," Stephen McCabe of Haggard Stores said.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal at the Haggard Stores potato variety open day in Meath, he said that how farmers are coping depends on whether they have access to water or not, but that "even farmers with access to water struggled to get size into their potatoes".

"Certain varieties like Rooster is probably a bit more insulated from the heat because it is late maturing and seems to be able to keep the canopy well, but some of the processing varieties struggled in the heat," the agronomist noted.

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Worryingly, he said that even varieties that have got water "haven't done a whole lot".

"August is a month that you'd like to see the potatoes bulking, but it hasn't happened because it is so hot and dry.

"There's a lot to do and this season is coming to an end very quickly. We will probably see that if the weather does change, potatoes will be very late to mature and that will be another issue in itself."

Bruising

"For our customers, bruising is everything. Going into crisp or chip, high dry matter makes them very susceptible to bruising.

"We have done tests this week and they’ve come back with 30% dry matter, 31% in some cases, which is 8% to 9% higher than normal for this time of year.

"Coupled with that, there are a lot of small potatoes," Stephen noted.

"In the yield digs we did here, we were getting 12t for crisping varieties, but there’s a lot of small potatoes in that, so whether they will go over a grader machine remains to be seen.

"There's a lot going to happen between now and harvest, which will be the end of September, but definitely there is a massive effect on potato crops this year."

Cost

"The cost impact from a yield point of view for crisping growers is somewhere around 14t/acre to break even.

"If they are struggling to get 10t/ac, there is a cost implication of that and that’s when you don’t take into account the money spent trying to keep the potatoes alive on water.

"The costs to water a field are massive. There are huge costs incurred this season and there is a risk that these potatoes won’t pay.

"We are coming to a situation where we can see that the yield has been set, that they are not going to bulk a huge amount more and that’s a big worry," he said.