Today’s growing and marketing challenges are making seed potato production increasingly risky.
Growing and marketing potatoes successfully depends on all kinds of things not going wrong. From weather to disease to fickle markets, risk is a part of every potato producer’s reality. When you’re a seed grower, however, those basic production risks are just the start.
“The need for seed acres is there,” Victoria Stamper, general manager for United Potato Growers of Canada, says. “The issue — and it’s not talked about quite as much in Canada as it is in Europe — is that seed growers have all the same issues of a regular grower, but they also carry a lot higher risk. They could grow a variety for three years, and then all of a sudden, the market doesn’t want it anymore. They’ve got higher costs [for inputs, compliance and administration]. So are enough people going to keep doing it?”
Seed growing for the processing market is fairly consistent – the market is primarily via contract, the varieties are stable and seed volume is generally well calibrated to need. The bigger challenges lie in the risk and uncertainty of growing seed for the fresh market.
In terms of current seed acreage, the West is strong: while B.C.’s acreage (about 430 acres) is small and declining, Alberta’s has a very strong seed market and Saskatchewan’s is expanding with room for growth. In the East, P.E.I. continues to grow seed for its own use but can’t export and is restricted by available acreage. There’s very small seed acreage in Ontario. That essentially leaves Quebec and some seed growers in Manitoba.
“When you put it all together, where’s this going?” Stamper says. “Certified seed acres planted has been on the decrease the last two years. It’s a trend we want to keep an eye on.”
Harry Meyers is executive director at Outlook, Saskatchewan-based True North Seed Potatoes, which grows nuclear through E2 tablestock seed potatoes, and Barrich Farms Ltd., which grows E2s for the table market and the seed market. This year, True North planted 17 varieties of potatoes into just under 600 acres.
While some of True North’s seed potatoes go to growers across Canada, far more get sold into Washington and Idaho. That has made the past year extremely challenging.
“Our principal markets down there have been in the early processing varieties: Shepody for one, and Ranger. The Americans, in crop year 2023 especially in Idaho, grew an excess of potatoes. We have contracts, significant contracts, but because of the glutted markets , we basically lost that seed market for this year – there was just no demand,” Meyers says.
The hit is very significant. While they’ve been able to sell some of the seed potatoes into the fresh market, doing so generally doesn’t pay well because seed potatoes are intentionally grown so much smaller than fresh market spuds.
“This year has been a real kicker,” Meyers says. “It’s a painful experience to have to endure. In fact, I’m rethinking our strategy here. I don’t want to find ourselves in the position we’re in again – it’s just too much of a gamble.”
While True North does sell to many seed markets, its primary purpose is to service Barrich Farms’ own seed needs. If it weren’t for filling this internal need, the reality is simple, he says they “wouldn’t be growing seed.”
Fred Tremblay is the business development coordinator at La Patate Lac Saint Jean, a cooperative of five seed growers who together grow some 2,500 acres of seed potatoes. Tremblay sells the seed Canada-wide and down the east coast into North Carolina and Virginia.
He says the risk seed growers carry extends beyond market gluts.
Last year, Tremblay and the La Patate Lac Saint Jean team tried 80 new clones in their plots. At best, he says, just one or two will be pushed further. It takes four years of multiplication, sometimes five, to get to a commercial stage, and even if years are invested, sometimes those varieties “just don’t work,” he says.
“So, you can work for five years and in the end, it doesn’t give anything; it just costs money.”
Meyers agrees.
“If I’m growing a variety that seems really popular today, by the time I take it from nuclear to E2s or E3s, that market could have changed significantly. In that case, you could be sitting there hung with a bunch of seed you can’t sell,” Meyers says. “In past years, there were a few stable varieties, but that’s changed. There are many new varieties coming online from Europe. So, there’s a lot more selection that can be made and I think that has put extra pressure on seed growers.”
While most people don’t want to talk about seed potato pricing, it’s an important part of the discussion.
“Seed growers are always the last to get any benefit from increases in pricing,” Stamper says. “The fresh market went crazy last year, but did that translate into what growers are willing to pay for seed? Because that’s their biggest raw material. They still want to pay less, so the seed grower kind of gets stuck in that trap.”
Back in 2007 when Tremblay started, La Patate Lac Saint Jean sold a hundredweight of potatoes for $12. Today, it averages $27. Though his buyers regularly point out the increase, Tremblay says increases still aren’t enough.
“At this point, we are okay. But we have to increase our prices again next year to try to cover our costs,” Tremblay says. “We have to put in four or five years [into a new variety] where we grow without any comeback on the costs. We have to apply more inputs: we have to apply mineral oil every seven days. We have more and more rules to respect and more and more loss as well. The costs are high, so we have no choice [but] to make another step up on the price.”
Meyers says the key is a government-legislated price guarantee.
“In Europe, the seed market prices are always aligned with the fresh market. The government provides legislation that says if the table market is this price, the seed market is this price plus.
“I always thought that was a pretty good idea. You still need to have the right varieties and the right quality, but it decreases risk.”
Tremblay’s very, very biggest concern is disease.
“The big fear that we have is a quarantine disease. The day that one of the quarantine diseases enter here, it’s done.”
Tremblay says government needs to play a key role in better protecting seed acres.
“We look towards the government to retighten the rules to ensure we can keep growing. We are in a protected zone here: only first-generation seed potato can enter our zone. But our goal is that no potatoes can enter: nothing from the outside would be the best world. We grow our own seed from the greenhouses so we can be self-sufficient.”
Tremblay applauds Ontario’s seed growers for coming together to try to retighten the rules in that province and says all seed-growing provinces across Canada need to do the same. “There aren’t safe zones yet, but that’s the next step.”
When it comes right down to it, how big an issue is declining seed acres?
“I’m not sure,” says Stamper. “I’m hearing now from all the sectors but maybe more so fresh that we need to pay attention to this because without our seed growers, we’re all nowhere. We need to support our seed growers.”
