PRESQUE ISLE – Maine potato growers mostly agree that 2003-04 is so far a bad year for the industry, but leaders told growers Thursday night that there are bright lights on the horizon.

Growers were told that research in potato storage continues and is positive, that work in developing rotation crops has done well and more is in the offing, and that members of the industry are increasingly professional.

More than 100 growers attended the annual meeting of the Agricultural Bargaining Council at the Presque Inn and Convention Center to hear from their leaders, both local and from other segments of the industry.

Gov. John Baldacci was slated to be guest speaker, but he could not attend because he was still recuperating from injuries suffered in a motor vehicle accident Wednesday.

“We have to work for the good of the industry,” Bruce Flewelling of Easton, the new president of ABC, told the members. “Either we prosper together, or we perish together.”

Allison McCain, chairman of McCain Foods, was even more optimistic.

“We are not going to perish in the Maine potato industry,” the potato processor said. “The industry is one the rise, due in part to better management, and better storage.

“We are much more professional than we used to be in the industry,” he said. “We have to compete, with the West and the world.”

He said one of the disadvantages in northern Maine is weight restrictions on Interstate 95. He addressed his comments to Robert Spears, Maine commissioner of agriculture, hoping they will get back to the governor.

The 80,000-pound limit on trucks adds 25 percent to the cost of transportation of potato products from Aroostook County, he said.

“It puts us at a disadvantage, it makes us less competitive and gives us safety and environmental concerns others don’t have,” he said.

“Maine is facing times of great challenge and great possibilities,” Spears said in his turn at the rostrum. “We need to make farms in Maine more profitable.”

Toward that end, Spears said, there is research in potato storage, and the results of that will make the Maine potato grower more efficient.

More work must be done, he said, in marketing and research to assist the industry that is worth $540 million to the Maine economic picture.

He lauded the efforts of ABC in the development of rotation crops over the last several years. He mentioned especially the advances in growing canola, and the new endeavor in trying to grow mustard seed in Aroostook County.

“We must become better marketers of our product,” Verne DeLong, executive director of ABC, told the growers. “We must produce for the customer, whether it is seed, processing or table stock potatoes.

“Our mission at ABC is for the industry to have a better place in the food chain,” said the Aroostook County leader.

DeLong said 2003 was a “different growing season” where growers had to deal with water problems, both not enough and too much of it.

He also raised the issue of dealing with the consumption of potatoes, in a country where dieters are causing a “real problem” for potato growers.