Spud growers had wild ride
By Desirai Schild, Ag Weekly correspondent
Monday, December 22, 2008 1:13 PM CST
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - The past year was a rollercoaster for Idaho’s potato producers
“It was a really wild ride,” said Keith Esplin, Blackfoot, executive director of Potato Growers of Idaho. “Production costs fluctuated wildly with the cost of fertilizer and fuel going up so much. The high price of grain persuaded a lot of growers to plant that instead of potatoes.”
High grain prices also drove up the cost of leasing farm ground in 2008, he said.
“We lost some potato growers in 2008 because they switched to grain,” Esplin said. “I don’t know if they are out forever or just while grain prices were so high. We’ll see next year.”
Grain crops require less water than do potatoes, also making them more appealing to farmers.
Rough weather may have delayed planting and slowed growth in the spring, but crops matured and flourished into a large harvest for the number of acres planted. This offset what could have been a record low at harvest. Records were set earlier in the year.
“Between forty-five thousand and forty-nine thousand less acres were planted in potatoes across the state this year,” said Jerry Wright, United Potato Growers of Idaho CEO. That office is based in Idaho Falls.
“That’s a historic low,” Wright said. “It’s the lowest number of acres in twenty-five years. That means we had 15 million hundred weight fewer potatoes in Idaho and a total of twenty million hundredweight less throughout the Northwest.”
Wright said the former potato acres going into wheat and barley turned out not to be a bad thing. The fewer potatoes planted and harvested helped bring up the price in the fall of 2008.
Esplin said potatoes are currently bringing $9 to $10 per hundred pounds. Last year at this time, prices were $5 to $6 per hundred pounds.
“There is a little profit for the potato growers this year,” he said. “Not as much as if the production costs hadn’t been so high, though. That always has to be a consideration when you look at the bottom line.”
Another wild card was the economy. “About 60 percent of our potatoes go into the foodservice industry, into restaurants,” Wright said. “In this type of economy, people stop going to nice restaurants as much, and that impacts potatoes. So, being down by fifteen million hundredweight has been a good thing for producers this year.”
People are still eating potatoes.
“People may not be having steak and a baked potato,” Esplin said. “But, they’re probably still eating burgers and fries.”
Wright said just the name “Idaho potato” has power in the market.
“We still have the only brand named potato in the country,” he said. “When asked about their potatoes, eight to ninety percent will say they eat Idaho potatoes.”
The Idaho Potato Commission is already addressing the impact of a recession on the potato industry by launching an ad campaign to remind people potatoes are nutritious and a good value.
Frank Muir, president and CEO of the Idaho Potato Commission, said their fiscal year started in September 2008 and has been bringing positive responses.
“Denise Austin is our official spokesperson for the healthiness, the value and the versatility of Idaho potatoes,” Muir said. “This is the first commercial with her filmed in Idaho. We’ve been getting a lot of e-mails on the ad. It’s running on national cable networks.”
The commercial also aired for several weeks on a billboard on 42nd Street in New York City.
IPC partnered with a variety of well-known chefs in 2008, including Wolfgang Puck, to create new and unique recipes for Idaho potatoes. Each month, a recipe was donated by a famous chef and listed on the Commission’s Web site.
“We pledged ten cents to UNICEF for every time someone clicked on the recipes, up to $50,000,” Muir said. “We will be sending fifty thousand dollars to UNICEF at the end of this program.”
The United Nations had declared 2008 the Year of the Potato because it offers such great nutritional value.
“They want to encourage more potato production and consumption across the world,” Muir said. “It’s more economical and easier to grow than rice.”
“It’s been an exciting year,” he said. “And, next year looks even better.”
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