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By Dale Lathim, Potato Growers of Washington
The potato industry has always been a rollercoaster ride, but in the Columbia Basin, we have historically been able to avoid most of the ups and downs endured by growers in other regions. Through our blessings of great soil and weather conditions, our historical yield and quality has been consistently second to none. Further, those blessings take the variation out of both yield and quality to give us the least divergence from historical trend lines. Because of those consistencies on the production side, the potato contracts have provided an amazingly stable economic platform that has been the backbone of the agricultural community in the Columbia Basin.
However, last year, we saw a great drop-off in our potato yields and quality that significantly reduced contract-generated revenue at a time when we were experiencing unprecedented inflation in the cost of production. After that very painful experience, growers were hoping for and expecting a rebound to normal potato production at or maybe even above the historical averages.
This hope was holding firm for most of the growing season, even with the early harvest yields coming in much lower than expected due to an unusually cool spring. Most industry experts thought the crop was behind by about two weeks when harvest began, but long-range forecasts were showing nearly perfect weather for the rest of the growing season. However, those hopes and expectations started to fade in early to mid-August when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees each day. By the end of the month, August went down as the hottest on record for the Tri-Cities of Washington.
Rather than catching up, the potato plants were not able to do much, if any, bulking each day, and the later planted fields that were about on time in July joined the early variety fields in being close to two weeks behind in development. Over the course of fewer than 30 days, the estimates on the crop changed from being at or above average in overall yield to being near 10 percent below average.
The saving grace and what is different from last year is that for the most part, the quality this year is exceptional other than size. The smaller size profile, of course, is part of the reason for the lower yields and will make it challenging for processors to meet the length requirements in some of their contracts. But overall, it should be a manageable situation.
Any contract overages or open potatoes should be worth a small fortune this year. Throughout history, there has always been a very large pile of open potatoes in Idaho and a fair amount in the Basin. This year, due to fears of water shortages and the high cost to grow potatoes, Idaho’s speculative growers opted to plant other crops with a more certain profit level that required less water. As a state, Idaho is down more than 25,000 acres from last year, yet all segments of the industry there have maintained historic levels of contracting, which only leaves the speculative potatoes to account for the reduction. With our reduced yields, there are very few contract overages, and fewer truly open potatoes were planted this year than we normally see. This is creating a very large demand for the few open potatoes in the Pacific Northwest, so prices should be very high throughout this marketing year.
I hope everyone has had a very safe harvest season, and I wish you the best as you finish out this year and start to enjoy some well-deserved downtime with your families.
