FLOOD-HIT potato farmers will tomorrow be asking Agriculture Minister Nick Brown for help as they face the biggest crisis in the industry for many years.

Officials of the National Farmers Union will be presenting a dossier to Mr Brown, which shows that, in Yorkshire alone, 200,000 tons of potatoes, valued at £16m, have still not been harvested from water-logged fields.

They will also tell the minister that, without further help, the critical situation could "be the final straw that breaks the camel's back".

More than 1,000 potato farmers in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland have been unable to harvest their full crops.

North Yorkshire, where half of the crop remains underground, is the worst-affected area in the country.

Mr Brown has already granted one concession to the hard-pressed farmers by agreeing to pay them subsidies on land they have had to "set aside" from crop growing.

Rob Simpson, NFU spokes-man at York, said that between a quarter and a half of the potato crop in the North-East had not been harvested and many farmers were facing the biggest crisis in their lives.

In Yorkshire as a whole, he said, about 200,000 tons of potatoes were still left in the ground and they were worth £16m to farmers.

But the worst-hit area was North Yorkshire, where more than half of the year's crop had still not been harvested.

"Although the water generally is receding, the process is very, very slow and the land is still saturated," said Mr Simpson. "The next two weeks will be critical if the crops are to be saved."

Marcus Walker, field manager of the British Potato Council, which has more than 1,000 members in the North-East, said that what was needed to save the crops was a period of dry, windy weather.

"But if recent weather trends are anything to go by, that seems very unlikely," he said. "The wet summer we have experienced, followed by the floods, could be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back for some farmers. Potatoes are an expensive crop to grow."