Contracted acres for 2024 are down, but concern about storage availability is decreasing as processors move their way through the stored inventory.
What a difference a quarter of a year makes. This spring, holdover from last fall’s giant crop was causing some stress and rethinking across the potato value chain. Today, we’re seeing significant movement in the pile, including in the processing surplus.
Fresh Potatoes
On the fresh side, the stored crop is moving as it should, with no significant worries about volume. Inventories are declining particularly in reds and yellows, but even russets shouldn’t face significant carryover, says Victoria Stamper, general manager of the United Potato Growers of Canada.
“Russets are still the most available because of the surplus in the U.S. – there’s just an abundance of russets for everybody — but growers do not seem overly concerned.
“The majority of the fresh is in the East but there’s confidence that they’ll all be cleaned up.”
The one notable downside to a generally positive fresh market story has been high cull rates due to soft rot and hollow heart.
Seed Potatoes
Fresh market seed potatoes have moved well this spring. Processing seed, not surprisingly, has faced more of a market glut. There was almost certainly a significant volume of processing seed left at the end of the planting season in Alberta and Saskatchewan due to reduced fry contract volumes. Specific numbers aren’t available for Saskatchewan, though Stamper is working with the province to begin reporting their volumes going forward.
“Alberta and Saskatchewan had a very good seed crop and then contracts were cut going into this year, so I think there’s still volume there, but it’ll disappear,” she says.
Processing Potatoes
High inventory from last year’s over-contracted acres in Alberta and Manitoba mean growers should expect inventory to extend into late August or early September, says Stamper. Processors are likely to continue running the 2023 crop as long as possible. That, together with the fact that planted acres in Alberta and Manitoba are significantly down (the early crop acreage is expected to be dramatically reduced and regular crop acreage will be down as well) means that most processing spuds will eventually make their way through processing.
That said, some growers facing significant oversupply are opting towards large-scale donations to food security agencies like Farm Link (if you didn’t see our story in the spring about two Manitoba potato farms’ 12-million-pound potato donation, check it out at https://spudsmart.com/tackling-food-insecurity-at-scale/).
Idaho
Stamper says the most common question she’s heard all spring and early summer is: ‘What’s happening in Idaho?’
“Everyone’s focused on one place because it matters so much,” she says.
Where Canada is in relatively good position for moving stored stocks, Idaho — which produces as many potatoes as all of Canada combined — still has very significant stores of both fresh and processing potatoes remaining.
“Idaho still has so many fresh russets that it’s impacted colours. That has a trickle-over effect in pricing for us — not necessarily for this year, but for the next crop,” Stamper says.
Idaho has dropped its planted acreage somewhat, but probably not enough to adequately offset the glut.
“It is estimated by some that their acreage is down [for the coming growing season] from 330,000 to 315,000 acres. A lot of people will say they probably should be down to about 300,000,” she says.
Why haven’t they reduced more? The answer comes down to scale and opportunity.
“Idaho operates at such a scale that they are perhaps able to better handle a rough year in pricing and still have the opportunity to market their ‘Idaho brand’ russets around North America,” says Stamper. “Growers in Canada, operating individually at a smaller scale, appear to be more cautious about any planting beyond what they think the market will absorb.”
While Idaho’s heavy stock did impact the Canadian market somewhat — farmers obviously didn’t get the same highs as last year — Canadian prices have held fairly well and better than American pricing for russets.
