News on The Potato Supply Chain from Northern America

Researchers on P.E.I. and in Alberta are looking for new ways to kill wireworms before the larvae destroy farmer's crops. Christine Norohna from Agriculture Canada has already done some research using buckwheat and brown mustard as rotation crops. She...

McCain Foods (Canada) honoured it's Central Plains potato producers at a dinner November 23 in Portage la Prairie. During the annual Growers Banquet, the Top 10 growers for the year were named. Anton Wiebe Ltd. was named the 2011 McCain champion pota...

After eating a potato-plentiful lunch that she deemed both “delicious and nutritious,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins was honored Monday afternoon for her work in assuring that schools across the nation are free to serve potatoes to students. During a lunche...

Processors in Idaho and Malheur County, Oregon used 7.49 million cwt of raw potatoes during October, an increase of 6 percent from last October. Accumulated processing of 2011 crop raw potatoes to November 1 was 20.5 million cwt, up 40 percent.

Statistics Canada has published the preliminary production estimates for the 2011 potato crop in Canada. The Canadian potato production is estimated at 92,653,000 hundredweight (4 202 740 tonnes). This is down 4% from last year’s revised production. T...

Extreme weather carved a chunk out of Manitoba's potato production this year, but high prices are helping to ease the pain for local producers. Manitoba farmers harvested 38,102 fewer tonnes of potatoes this year -- 825,552 versus 863,654 in 2010, for...

Construction has started on a $5.5 million potato harvesting equipment plant in Heyburn in south-central Idaho for Double L Manufacturering. Double L Manufacturing co-owner David Price said the 74,000-square-foot plant located in the new Magic Valley ...

Idaho potato shippers are hitting a bit of a wall when it comes to getting that Idaho gold out of the fields and on the road. It could be the biggest catch-22 in the potato shipment industry right now. The Idaho Grower Shippers Association represents ...

As the US legislation regarding school meal programs makes is way through the various stages of the approval process, a new stage has been reached and the provision that prohibits the USDA to set limits to vegetables is preserved in the current text un...

Functional Technologies Corp. is pleased to report the development of a third (3rd) generation of its proprietary acrylamide-preventing (AP) yeast platform, wherein various improvements made to the Company's original underlying AP technology have enabl...

Idaho potato growers saw increases in yields, tuber sizes and total production from last fall, according to a report released Nov. 9 by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Statewide, the 2011 spud harvest totaled 127 million hundredweig...

With multiple meals to plan and guests coming in from out of town, the holidays can become hectic for most hosts. But thankfully, there are products out there that offer stress-free meal preparation – like Simply Potatoes. With Simply Potatoes, you ca...

The popular Yukon Gold potato was a winner at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto this year, where it topped entries in the seventh annual Seed of the Year competition (east division). Developed by the late Garnet (Gary) Johnston, a research...

Earlier this week the USDA has released their latest estimates of the 2011 fall potato production in the United States.

More than a decade has passed since Jim Tiede was among the growers caught up in a debacle over the first U.S. genetically modified potato variety. Even today, the American Falls, Idaho, farmer copes with the fallout of planting Monsanto's GM potato N...

Idaho potato farmers who harvested later than normal because of a prolonged spring got their crops in without any significant damage before colder weather set in, though they had to push the envelope in some cases. There have been some reports of mino...

Today the USDA published figures on the US potato production in their report "Crop Production". Here is the summary on potatoes:

Private labels and a switch back to paper bags are among the packaging trends cited by Prince Edward Island potato grower-shippers. In packaging, Gary Linkletter, president and co-owner of Summerside-based Linkletter Farms Ltd., cited a trend toward p...