News on The Potato Supply Chain from the United States

When Leah Cook and her family moved to the St. John Valley 15 years ago and took up organic gardening and raising animals on their Grand Isle farm, she said more than one resident dismissed them as “hippy farmers.”

The first potato line ever launched under the Potandon Produce ™ brand name will soon be available.

Fresh Solutions Network announced that Mack Farms has joined their network of best-in-industry grower/shipper partners.

State Agriculture Commissioner Walt Helmick is on a mission to create jobs by convincing West Virginian landowners to produce potatoes — lots of potatoes.

Columbia Basin potato processors slowed down during the West Coast port impasse, making fewer potatoes into french fries, hash browns and other potato products shipped around the world.

Black Gold Farms, an industry leader in potato production, sales and marketing, recently acquired the legacy potato production operation, George Wood Farms located near Camden, NC.

Rodney McCrum, president and chief operating officer of Pineland Farms Naturally Potatoes, says he is dedicated to growing the company he started with a dozen other potato farmers in 1995.

Heinz Frozen Foods, manufacturer of the Ore-Ida retail brand is changing the procurement process for the potatoes for its Ontario, OR potato processing plant. Heinz will now contract with the Oregon Potato Company, Pasco, Washington.

Idaho is currently confronted with the unusual situation that large Russet potatoes are far more expensive than small Russets and the price gap is only increasing.

Alarmed by rapid deforestation in an ecologically sensitive swath of central Minnesota, state regulators have ordered a broad environmental review that will temporarily halt conversion of the region’s jackpine stands to potato fields.

Today, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report recommending fresh white potatoes to be an eligible vegetable for purchase using the WIC Cash Value Voucher. This is a reversal compared to previous IOM recommendations

The Northern Plains Potato Growers Association will honor Ron Norman with its Meritorious Service Award at their banquet on February 17th.

Levels of zebra chip, a crop disease in potatoes spread by potato psyllids and caused by the Liberibacter bacterium, were down signficiantly in the Pacific Northwest.

A former Potato Growers of Idaho executive director believes Idaho’s capacity to produce and pack potatoes has outgrown the market, at the expense of growers.

Officials with Idaho’s pale cyst nematode eradication program say they’ve discovered three more infested fields totaling 994 acres since October, including two fields that had previously been deregulated from the program.

POTATO EXPO 2015, held January 7-9, in Orlando, Florida, turned out to be the greatest event
yet for exhibitors and attendees.

Brendon and Sheldon Rockey of Rockey Farms in Center, Colorado, were named the recipients of the prestigious 2014 Environmental Stewardship Award presented at the National Potato Council’s 2015 Annual Meeting.

At the National Potato Council’s (NPC) 2015 Annual Meeting, held January 9-10, 2015, in Orlando, Florida, Dan Lake from Lake Seed, Inc. of Ronan, Montana, was elected to serve as NPC’s president for 2015 and to lead the council’s Executive Committee.