As new crop potato growing regions come on, the market is suddenly seeing change. “We had a really dynamic summer--from the grower’s perspective, they were getting historic numbers. Their yields were big and demand was right on top of supply,” says Ken Gad of Cambridge Farms Inc. While movement was strong, in the eastern part of the country, summer rains impacted production somewhat. “If we didn’t have the amount of rain that we had, we would have been completely out of this crop a week and a half or two weeks ago.”
Add to that the new growing regions getting into production. Delaware came on about 10 days ago and Minnesota, Quebec, Canada’s East Coast, Massachusetts, Long Island, Wisconsin, Maine and more are underway or about to begin as well. “A lot of things suddenly came on and now the markets are flooded. We went from massively high prices with huge return for the growers and we’ve now been in somewhat of a free fall for seven days,” says Gad. “We’re still in about five to seven days worth of “slop” and then it’s going to equal out.”
Greater seed availability
Add to that reports that the West Coast will have a sizeable crop this year. “If the indicators that I’m hearing are realistic, we’re going to have a very large crop of potatoes,” says Gad. He notes that part of this is the bounce back from a frost that happened four years ago in parts of the U.S. which took out some potato crops. “When you lose your crops, you lose the seed, so it’s taken three to four years to regenerate volume. In that time, growers also improve their agricultural practices so they’re growing more as well with more seed,” says Gad.
What does that mean? Pricing will likely come down though that means it could also set the stage for promotions. “So maybe everybody is looking at profit by volume this year as opposed to the past three years where it’s large profits, small volume,” says Gad.
The costs of production have also come back down somewhat. “Fertilizer bills were cut by 30-40 percent from the highs from a year ago for example,” Gad says. “In all, if we harvest what we think we’ll harvest, retailers can have a really good aggressive marketing season which will be beneficial to the growers.”
For more information:
Ken Gad
Cambridge Farms Inc.
Tel: +1 508-297-2630
[email protected]
https://cambridgefarms.wordpress.com/
