Chief defends potato checks> Focus on consumer urged

FRENCHVILLE — The state’s agriculture commissioner defended mandatory inspections of potatoes as he faced several potato growers who challenged the scheme during a meeting with farmers Tuesday night.

Commissioner Edward J. McLaughlin said the inspections are designed to stall the decades-old spiraling demise of the state’s potato industry, to increase potato acreage and to bring back consumer demand for Maine potatoes.

McLaughlin was adamant that mandatory potato inspections would reduce the numbers of complaints about “bad potatoes” being shipped from Maine. “the only solution to a very serious problem. I won’t change my mind.”

McLaughlin said he had the unanimous vote of the Maine Potato Board, “your own representatives,” to make the decision the last three commissioners of agriculture believed was an answer for the industry.

Reynold Soucy, a Fort Kent grower and broker, said he did not agree with McLaughlin about Maine losing its market share for round white table-stock potatoes and about a high number of consumer complaints.

Soucy said round white potato sales are down across the country. “We are bound to get some negative consumer reports when you ship a load of 10,000 bags of potatoes,” he said. He claimed the number of consumer complaints are small when looking at the total number of consumer bags of potatoes shipped to markets.

Soucy said the mandatory inspection law was created by McLaughlin and “can be overturned by [him].” He denied the Maine Potato Board spoke for farmers, who he claimed were 90 percent against the mandatory inspection edict. He said the 50 or more farmers attending an earlier meeting were not asked their opinions about the inspections.

McLaughlin told Soucy, with whom he has had several face-to-face sessions about mandatory inspections, to take “the emotion out of it. The numbers are real. The [Maine potato] industry is shrinking while competition is growing. They are growing because they are doing what the market wants of them.”

McLaughlin claimed to have a number of letters from “major users of potatoes who say it’s about time Maine had mandatory inspection. … The consumer is king. We are losing the consumer and your solution,” he said, speaking to Soucy, “is to let the industry die.

“You would be embarrassed to see some of the stuff we have taken off trucks” taking Maine potatoes to East Coast markets, he said.

Several farmers at the session raised concerns about Maine’s state-federal inspection “not being worth the paper it is printed on” when potatoes reach their destination. Buyers refuse loads of potatoes, they claimed, by using federal inspectors.

McLaughlin said shippers can ask for a second inspection and, “We hope to be able to have a team ready to intervene” in squabbles. He said department personnel have intervened in the past.

“We have to ensure consumers that we will ship a good product. After that happens, I can spend time in the marketplace selling good Maine potatoes. We have to show consumers we can do better,” said McLaughlin.

Several farmers maintained their problems are not with quality but “unfair competition from Canada … unscrupulous buyers … [and] unneeded mandates” from Augusta.

Robert Berube, a Fort Kent broker for Hapco of New York, agreed with McLaughlin. “Buyer preference is correct. … I have no problems with potatoes I buy from Maine farmers, because they ship good potatoes.”

He said he had only four loads sent back in 1995 from more than 1,200 loads he had shipped from Aroostook County.

“The problem is the farmer himself. You don’t want to understand that the consumer is the name of the game. If we don’t wake up, we won’t have an industry. We are losing market share,” said Berube.

Soucy claimed McLaughlin’s speech is the same one farmers heard when the Maine Bag Program was instituted. “That didn’t do it. You don’t have the support of the industry to do it [mandatory inspection]: You have the support of the Maine Potato Board.”

McLaughlin agreed the industry has other problems, but “your major problem is quality. I have seen it with my own eyes. I would be embarrassed to ship some of the stuff I see.”