The price of many potatoes has "gone through the roof" and Britain may need to import more following a year of freak floods, continued rain and low temperatures.
Somerset potato farmer Philip Vaux said that some of his crop has been planted more than a month late and is only just complete.
Similar experiences by farmers across the country mean the stores of last season's crops, which were already limited, are under even more pressure.
The Potato Council says the yield for 2012 was around 20 per cent lower than 2011, and with fewer acres under cultivation last year that meant the total crop was down around 24 per cent.
Mr Vaux told BBC's Farming Today: "This season's crop is well behind last year's crop which was bad enough as it was.
"With the shortfalls from last year there is bound to be shortages of potatoes, whether they come from abroad to fill the gap, that's going to be for quite a considerable time."
He has "just a few pallets" left at his farm in South Somerset. One Devon food retailer specialising in jacket potatoes said: "The price of jacket potatoes has gone through the roof in the last two weeks. A box that used to cost £8 now costs £19. I have never seen the price of raw materials rise as fast as we have seen in the last few weeks."
With the new season for jacket potatoes still several weeks away, the stock of stored vegetables is disappearing fast.
The Devon food retailer said: "We have increased our prices of jacket potatoes slightly. There is a trend towards using pre-cooked jacket potatoes and because they are frozen they are not subject to production variation but we choose to buy raw and oven-bake them ourselves."
Farmers either sell their crop at a pre-agreed contract price, mostly to food processors such as crisp-makers, or on the open market.
Some have had to buy in at high prices to fulfil their commitments.
Rob Clayton of the British Potato Council said margins across the whole supply chain have been squeezed.
He said: "Some potatoes whose appearance might have disqualified them from reaching the supermarket shelves and sent them for processing in a good year are now likely to be going for retail sale.
"They may have less bright skins, but they will still be British, and a recent survey showed that more than 80 per cent of consumers prefer to eat a British potato."
