FRENCHVILLE – Gerard Raymond’s crew was packing potatoes Saturday, being very careful to remove the unmarketable ones from the conveyors before they entered 5-pound packs destined for Avon, Mass.

Barrels of the so-called seconds and other damaged potatoes on the floor would be dumped in piles somewhere on the 350-acre farm after the load was completed.

Too much rain in the final month of the growing season has caused many potatoes in northern Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, to start rotting after a few weeks in storage. Farmers also are getting low prices for what’s left of the commodity, creating a second bad year in a row for Raymond and others in the industry.

“I’m selling this crop for 65 to 70 cents per 10-pound bag. That’s about half my cost of production,” said Raymond as he sat in his office Saturday after the bags bound for Massachusetts had been loaded.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said the prematurely graying 30-year-old second-generation farmer. “If this continues we will see more and more growers getting out. Some won’t plant in the spring, because they won’t be able to.”

During harvest last fall many in the potato industry were in high spirits as they witnessed record yields. Aroostook County, while the acreage planted was down by 3,000 acres, was looking at packed storage houses and more potatoes than were around at the end of the 2003 harvest.

But within weeks of the harvest, problems erupted with potatoes breaking down in storage. There was some late blight, but the biggest problem was that potatoes had absorbed too much rain late in the growing season and began to rot in storage.

Growers started hauling deteriorating potatoes out of storage and dumping them in piles in their fields. Raymond said he dumped about 3,500 barrels of the unmarketable potatoes early on. His problem now is finding markets for his good potatoes.

The problem is much the same in neighboring New Brunswick.

Some growers are bothered by the problems to the point that they were not willing to talk about it over the weekend.

Raymond said Saturday he had expected higher prices this year after growers started dumping potatoes. But despite fewer potatoes on the market, the higher price has not materialized.

Potato growers in northern Maine’s St. John Valley are among the hardest hit. They grow mostly tablestock and seed potatoes and are at the mercy of the market, an area where they have little control. The farmers are looking to expand their markets through exports, but Raymond said that wouldn’t be necessary if Canadian imports were not allowed in this country until after the Maine growers could sell their crops.

“I have different varieties, and have good quality potatoes, enough of them, but I can’t get the price I need for them,” he said. “My storages are full.”

His cost of production, he said, is $1,500 to $1,700 per acre and the market price does not cover that.

Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, agreed Friday that the industry is going through difficult times. He knows potatoes are being dumped, like they were last year, and that governmental assistance programs are minimal.

“Last year the industry dumped 2 million hundredweight of potatoes and this year it could be 3 million hundredweight or more,” he said. “There is a substantial amount of this in the St. John Valley, but there are also some in certain areas of central and southern Aroostook.”

“We have dumped a pretty good amount already,” he said. “We have to expect to have to dispose of more potatoes through nonmarketable channels than we did last year.”

The industry executive said the crop last fall was 2 million hundredweight more than the previous year. The potatoes that are being dumped are potatoes that break down in storage, or those not meeting market grades.

But Raymond believes good marketable potatoes also will end up being dumped later in the season if the market does not change.

Flannery said the demand for potatoes remains slow, especially for fresh tablestock potatoes. And by spring, potatoes in storage may also have deteriorated below marketable grades.

He said problems in the crop this year included some late blight problems, some pink rot, the big rains in the St. John Valley in early August, and some pretty untimely rain in other areas of The County. Problems didn’t appear at harvest, but were manifested after crops were placed in storage. He said it was water and a combination of things.

“There is a problem any time we raise something we can’t sell, and it will impact the industry,” he said. “There is no way you can dump 3 million hundredweight, 16 percent of production, without impacting growers.

“Some of those impacted this year were growers who were impacted last year,” he said. “Some growers will choose not to plant [next spring].”

Flannery said he wouldn’t be surprised if the industry lost growers and acreage when it comes time to put the new crop in the ground in May. He said that it’s hard to tell in January what could be lost.