P.E.I. potatoes make bittersweet crossing

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island – Squeaky-clean Prince Edward Island potatoes are making it into the U.S. market, but it’s a slow, painstaking process at the border crossing.

No spuds have been rejected since last week when some of the first trucks carrying Prince Edward Island potatoes after the lifting of a U.S. ban were stopped at the Maine border by fastidious inspectors, Ivan Noonan of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board said Friday.

He said shippers have turned up the water pressure and added more nozzles to their cleaning devices and now province spuds almost shine as they’re packaged for the U.S. market.

“I think we should take ‘pommes de terre’ off the box and just leave ‘pommes’ because these things are almost like apples,” Noonan said, referring to the French words for potatoes. Translated exactly, the words mean “apples of the earth.”

“That’s about what they have to be like to get across the border. But that’s fair ball,” he said. “We’ll do what we have to do. We want the business.”

Washington closed the U.S. border to P.E.I. potatoes in October, after a fungus called potato wart was found in the corner of one field. Potato wart, which causes unsightly protuberances on potatoes, is a contagious disease that can remain in soil.

The loss of U.S. markets was a major blow to island farmers and to the economy of the tiny Maritime province, where potato-growing is the main industry.

Angry P.E.I. farmers and Canadian scientists spent months trying to convince U.S. authorities that tests proved the wart hadn’t spread to other farms. Farmers quickly became convinced the dispute was more about U.S. protectionism than valid agricultural fears.

A deal reached last month allows shipment to the United States of table potatoes from 80 percent of province farms, providing they have been washed, de-sprouted, visually inspected and packed in bags of not more than 50 pounds.

Noonan said trying to get the spuds across the border remains an aggravating process, and said it often takes two to three hours for inspectors to go through each truckload.

In addition, he said, those who do the inspections for the U.S. Department of Agriculture have to be paid by the shippers.

He said the cost averages $175 to $200 per load.

“Truckers are cranky,” Noonan said. “They’re looking for more money. Everybody is still a little tense over the whole thing.”

The crossing at Houlton is the only route island potato truckers can use to get into the United States.