Local potato prices ‘terrible’ Record harvests out West blamed

PRESQUE ISLE – It’s the theory of supply and demand that has growers producing potatoes for the fresh market seeing red.

With a lot more potatoes grown this year across the country, the price has plummeted to about $2.50 to $3 per 100 pounds of potatoes for Maine growers.

“Prices are terrible,” Michael Corey, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, said Friday. “They remain terrible. There’s too much production in the West.”

Growers need at least $7 per hundredweight to break even, Corey estimated.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s stock report issued Friday, there was a record 310 million hundredweight of potatoes on hand on Dec. 1 in states that harvest their potatoes in the fall.

That figure is up 13 percent, according to the report, which can affect prices on the fresh market.

Record large crops and large yields in the Western fall-producing states contributed to the overproduction, according to the USDA report.

At the same time, the Eastern states, including Maine, were down in production, the report said.

As a result, the fresh market prices are about “as bad as possible,” Corey said.

With the overproduction, Idaho potato growers proposed asking the federal government to create a diversion program where the government purchases the produce for cattle feeding or school lunch programs.

However, Corey said the program won’t happen.

“There isn’t enough money in the United States government to make a difference,” Corey said.

In addition, there’s not enough support around the country for such a program, according to Corey.

The Northern American Potato Market News reported recently that support for the program was lacking during a recent National Potato Council meeting in Las Vegas.

Many growers said the diversion programs usually are implemented too late to help many farmers and disrupt orderly marketing plans, according to the newsletter.

An informal poll conducted by Fraser’s Potato Newsletter from Prince Edward Island found that feelings are mixed regarding a diversion program in the United States.

Some respondents felt that a diversion should have “strings attached” that would require farmers in the program to cut acres next year.

Others felt that such a federal program rewards farmers for overproduction, according to Fraser’s poll.

The Maine Potato Board has not taken an official position on the proposal, but will discuss the issue during a meeting later this week.