The North American Potato Storage Organization wants to draw more attention – and more research dollars – to what it says is an overlooked side of the potato business.
Much of the commercial potato crop grown in Canada spends months in storage before moving on to processors and fresh market buyers in the supply chain. Getting storage right is a vital aspect of the potato business since incorrectly stored potatoes can spoil, shrink or start to sprout, leading to significant product losses — and less profit — for farmers.
Despite this, some believe storage is frequently overlooked when it comes to innovation, research and education efforts aimed at advancing the potato industry in Canada and the United States.
The North American Potato Storage Organization (NAPSO) is a brand-new industry group working hard to change that.
Addie Waxman, manager of agronomy, North American storage for McCain Foods, helped launch NAPSO this past spring along with three other founding members: Emily Merk, North American sales manager at Restrain; Bill Orr, Canadian technical rep for 1,4Group; and Lukie Pieterse, editor and publisher of Potato News Today.
Photo credit: McCain Foods
Waxman says a primary motivation for the new group’s launch was to draw much more attention to the storage season and to help support potato farmers through access to improved resources. This effort will include generating and disseminating information on sustainable practices, best management techniques and the latest technologies that can enable producers to be more successful with their storages, she says. NAPSO will also be investing in advocacy, especially ensuring storage has a place at major potato conferences and meetings.
“Potato storage is an overlooked aspect of the entire potato production chain. When you go to most potato meetings, the emphasis is on the field side,” Waxman says. “The growers are eager to learn about their industry and yet, when we go to many of the conferences, storage isn’t even a topic they can learn more about.”
The fledgling organization hasn’t been around very long but is already making significant progress.
NAPSO has already been asked to participate in the Potato Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting coming up in Madison, Wisconsin, next July. It will hold the highly coveted symposium slot, four prime hours set aside at the start of the conference agenda, which Waxman considers a real feather in NAPSO’s cap.
“We are very honored to be working with the PAA, a truly trusted entity in the potato industry. We are to bring in an international speaker and we’ll have three to four other speakers as well. These four hours will be all about storage,” she says.
Waxman notes that, since potato storage hasn’t been touched all that much before now, “we are rich in topics to present on, and in fact, we’ll have to whittle [our options] down.”
More Storage Research Needed
Waxman says participation in the PAA Annual Meeting should help towards NAPSO’s major goal of ensuring more university interest and research dollars are directed towards improvements in the potato storage sector.
“It is absolutely a very sweet spot for us. We hope to show all the researchers there not only how important storage is but also the research potential for storage,” she says.
Though the conference typically draws more researchers than farmers, the fact that the conference is being hosted centrally in Wisconsin, together with promotion efforts about the storage emphasis at the symposium, will hopefully also draw many farmers from both the U.S. and Canada.
In addition to the PAA Annual Meeting, NAPSO is working on lining up other major events where it can deliver presentations and panel discussions around key issues like reducing respiration, managing disease and promoting dormancy in storage. Waxman says getting their messages out into the industry will not only showcase the storage sector, but it will also help NAPSO build its presence. Eventually, NAPSO plans to hold an annual stand-alone potato storage conference.
Waxman notes numerous industry representatives have already expressed interest in speaking at both the storage symposium component of next year’s PAA annual meeting as well as at other potato conferences NAPSO hopes to participate in, such as the 2025 Potato Expo in Florida and Canadian gatherings including the Alberta Potato Conference and Manitoba Potato Production Days.
Lagging Behind
One of the driving forces behind the creation of NAPSO is the need for storage management and technologies to keep up with change. While rapid innovation in potato farming equipment, products and agronomy continue to transform the industry, potato storage hasn’t kept pace, Waxman says.
“There have been some technological advancements, but for the most part, many potato storage structures are very similar to what they were 30, 40 years ago,” she says.
That reality — together with the innovations in other parts of the industry — means stored spuds are actually at more risk than ever. For example, harvesting equipment advances mean more potatoes can be brought more quickly to potato bins. However, many bins simply aren’t equipped to handle the intense heat load created when such a large quantity of potatoes come into storage warm at the same time. This can lead to significant losses.
“The older technology in storages isn’t catching up, so how do we work with the growers on removing that additional field heat that’s coming faster than ever before into the storages?” says Waxman. “It’s a different situation for growers now than what their parents and grandparents dealt with.”
Another key storage innovation opportunity — and necessity, Waxman says — is advancement in chemical treatments including biologicals that could help producers better deal with disease and other storage problems.
“To me, it’s a wide-open world that we can investigate and bring storage forward. There is a lot of research in the field expanding and growing every year. I would like to see that same sort of energy applied to the storage side of potato production,” she says.
While technological advancement is a key NAPSO priority, information, extension and education are critical too. Waxman says more education around how the latest potato varieties hold up in the bin is just one example of info-sharing that could directly benefit farmers.
“The younger generation of farmers right now fully embraces technology … and they are eager to use it,” she says. “If NAPSO can provide a panel of speakers on the latest and greatest technology for storages, people can apply that to (improve) storages on their farming operations. If they don’t have the information, they can’t apply it.”
Melting Pot for Ideas
In addition to capturing additional research dollars and sharing information and resources, NAPSO also intends to serve as a liaison between multiple perspectives and multiple parts of the value chain. It aims to bring together experts from various fields to forge partnerships and share insights that benefit potato storage.
If NAPSO’s first in-person session, held in June during the 2024 PAA Annual Meeting, is any indication, they’re off to a good start.
“We were very pleased by the number of people who were there from all across industry. We had representatives from the chemistry companies, grower representatives, and processors, which included French fries and chippers. We also had different universities there. So that was really good to see,” says Waxman.
Ultimately, NAPSO has an open-door policy to anyone in the potato industry.
“We want people from the processing side, the fresh industry, the seed market … also buyers of our end-use products,” she adds. “We want all of them there.”
NAPSO is expanding its organizational structure to include a central committee made up of nine dedicated industry professionals, who will lead various sub-committees comprised of additional members.
Waxman says there’s already been “an enormous amount of interest so far” within the potato industry in filling these positions.
For more information about NAPSO and its upcoming events, visit www.napso.info or contact NAPSO communications coordinator Emily Merk at [email protected] or [email protected].