With the 2019 potato harvest under way as of August in the earlier fields, the Idaho Potato Commission is projecting that the state will harvest just under 309,000 acres of potatoes this year, down about 1 percent from a year ago.
“Significant weather issues” around planting time, including some late frosts, “have definitely had an impact, at least in some areas, on tuber size and yield,” said Frank Muir, president and chief executive officer of the commission. “We are obviously not going to have a huge bumper crop.”
The two biggest shipping years in the last 10 have been the past two years, Muir said. Shipments from the 2018 harvest were just wrapping up in mid-August. “We are anticipating we will finish a little under 38 million hundredweight,” down just slightly from the year before, he said. The anticipated lower yield this year “will take us off of the current trend line of yields going north.”
However, he said there has been no indication that quality will be adversely affected by the early weather problems. With good quality and lower yields, and with the commission moving forward on its demand-building programs, “I think … this year’s pricing will be very strong for potato growers” with large potatoes in particular being a premium.
But, he added, “Until we get the potatoes all out of the ground, it is hard to say for sure” what the yields, the size profile, or even the quality will be.
Growers and shippers with whom The Produce News spoke were in general agreement that the harvest is running approximately a week behind normal due to weather-related delays at planting time yields and size profile in many early fields are trending below normal. However, they are in agreement that quality is looking good.
Derek Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing for Wilcox Fresh in Rexburg, ID, said the new crop was “a little behind” due to June frost, and yields appear to be lower, particularly on Norkotahs. But “growing conditions have been very good” since, and “quality looks good,” he said. “We’ll be digging Burbanks here at the end of September. We grow a few reds as well. Quality looks good.” They are also a little behind and will probably start in October.
Steve Elfering, vice president of operations at Potandon Produce LLC in Idaho Falls, ID, said that the size profile of the crop in the early fields was running significantly smaller than normal, but he was hopeful that with more growing time, the later fields would have better size. The weather has been good during the growing season, and the quality of the potatoes looks good, he said.
Kevin Stanger, president of Wada Farms Marketing Group LLC in Idaho Falls, said that quality looks good, but yields are off a little in the early lots. With regard to size profile, he is seeing some lots running smaller than normal, but others that have normal sizing.
“The season has done really well for us,” said Coleman Oswald, sales manager at Eagle Eye Produce in Idaho Falls. “We were one of the very first potato warehouses in the state of Idaho to get into new crop,” starting russets on Aug. 5, reds the week of Aug. 12 and yellows the week of Aug. 19. “The crop has been coming along nicely. With the cool, wet spring, the size profile that we anticipate coming out of the ground is definitely going to be a bit on the smaller size, which would mimic what we saw last season. So we anticipate prices to be healthy” with larger sizes bring a premium.
