A farming family in the small village of Vlamertinge in West Flanders has decided to give away their 120 tonne stock of potatoes for free amid a massive oversupply of potatoes in Belgium.
Last week, the price of potatoes in Belgium fell to zero as a result of a Europe-wide glut. Rather than let the potatoes simply rot or turn them into cattle feed, the owners of Het Torenhof farm chose to simply give their potatoes away. The result? Hundreds of people descended on their farm, ready to take as many spuds as they could carry.
What was launched as a local initiative quickly turned into an international media sensation, with journalists arriving from the UK, Germany and France to see the potato mountain for themselves.
A mountain of potatoes
West Flanders is stereotyped as "potato country" for a reason. The Belgian province is a real agricultural megahub, where potatoes of all sorts are grown, the likes of bintje or fontane, to be shipped to industrial giants of frozen potato products – Clarebout, Agristo and Lutosa.
Most potato farmers in West Flanders supply large processing factories through contracts. This dictates a certain quota which if unmet, it can cause fines for the growers. The overproduction of potatoes and other vegetables is not something unusual, but being unable to make money from your produce is a small tragedy in itself for many locals.
Since the owners of Het Torenhof announced their giveaway over Easter, there has been a steady stream of visitors to the farm. When The Brussels Times paid a visit earlier this week, we saw one car arrive roughly every 10 minutes.
The back of the storage room showed the gravity of the problem: there is a literal mountain of potatoes stacked on top of each other. Visitors use carts, bags and buckets to take home as many potatoes as they need – or even more.
A mountain of potatoes in the shed of the farm. Credit: Kosmos Khoroshavin / The Brussels Times
Arriving at the farm, we were warmly received by owner Lies Sampers, her mother Karin and two young daughters, Lotte and Noor. They are the fourth generation of the same family running the farm, which boasts a classic Flemish red-brick facade.
The two girls and their brother Tom came up with the idea of giving away the potatoes, and organised everything from initial flyers to the welcoming of guests.
“We had so many potatoes left over, so we thought what we should do with them," Lotte told us. "We would have to spend even more work on disposing of them if we couldn’t figure it out. By that point it was getting bad so we asked our parents, why not just give them to the people who would like to have them?”
The other goal of their campaign is to collect voluntary donations to buy a new mountain bike for their small brother, who is currently riding a bike previously used by the girls. “It makes us cheerful to see people becoming happy from our potatoes, while the pile diminishes and we can go further into the shed. It is also not long before we have enough money to buy a bike for Tom,” said Lotte.
Lotte and Noor pictured at the farm. Credit: Kosmos Khoroshavin / The Brussels Times
Visitors like Luc and Monique from Roeselare are keen to show their solidarity with the farming family. “It's a good campaign, everyone should do this, instead of putting it all to waste. I think many people are content to go directly to the farmer to help get rid of the leftovers. But I find that they shouldn't do it for free. In 2026 free is not good,” Luc told us.
When asked what they would do with the free potatoes they received they said: “We are old timers, so we eat quite a lot of potatoes. Making fries, boiled, mashed or baked. Before pasta and rice that’s what everyone was eating.”
Luc and Monique from Roeselare visited the farm. Credit: Kosmos Khoroshavin / The Brussels Times
It ain’t much, but it’s honest work
Later on, we sit down to speak with Sampers, who owns the farm with her husband Wim. Sampers combines her farm work with being a nurse at a local hospital and an Ypres city councillor for the Flemish Christian-Democrats (CD&V).
“Growing potatoes requires a lot of tractor work, disease control, and big machines," she told us. "But as a farmer's wife, I love the moment of planting, growing, and blooming. We farm around 55 hectares with potatoes, corn for the cows, wheat, sugar beets, and grass.”
Sampers is very pleased with the way their initiative is going, but admits it involved a lot of work to organise. She said that initially there were about 150 tonnes of leftover produce, but not everything can be disposed of. “We hope to get about 50 tonnes away, but we can’t get rid of all of it," she said. "We will give away a part, another will be mixed with mowed grass in a pit to become cattle feed for next year, and the rest will be buried on the field by plowing them under.”
“If we have to take them out and dump them on the field and destroy them, that costs us time, and time is money. So rather than that, we give them away to the people. It's a win-win,” she added.
Sampers is happy about the attention their giveaway has received and was amazed at how far people were willing to travel to support them. “Many come from Flanders or the region around Ypres and Vlamertinge, but we have also had people from Bruges, Ghent, Roeselare, Antwerp, Merksem, Hasselt, and even a lady from France, who was traveling to Germany on stopped on her way there," she said.
The family are huge potato lovers themselves – whether cooked, as fries, puree, potato waffles, rostis or gratin. Asked why they caused such a media storm, the sisters came up with their own compelling reason: “The potato is central to Belgian culture. Fries and Belgium are synonymous. So if something goes wrong with the potato, I think it gets a lot of attention.”
If you are willing to make the trip to Vlamertinge to try the potatoes grown by the family, you will find their quaint farm on Brielstraat.
