Sizing up the State of the Potato Industry
March 23, 2020 Conventional wisdom says the past few years have been rough. While the trade war and boggy springs have had an impact, the potato industry is still robust.
Planted and harvested areas for potatoes in 2019 continued a downward trend, USDA reports.
“The 2019 all-potato acreage indicates a 6% decline in planted area and a 5% decline in harvested acres from a year ago,” the agency says in its most recent “Vegetables and Pulses Outlook,” published in September 2019.
It cites heavy rainfall as the main reason for the 2019 decline.
In another section of the same report, USDA reported on import and export totals.
For exports, 2018 saw a sharp decline, likely due to the trade war. It plunged 169 million pounds from 2017 to 2018 (789 million pounds to 620 million pounds). It rebounded in 2019, but not to 2017 levels — 779 million pounds.
These numbers include only the January-to-July figures. USDA wanted to compare like numbers, and it hasn’t released data for the second half of 2019 as of press time for this article.
Import figures show a different story. Although the amount of potatoes imported declined from 2017 to 2018 (from 755 million pounds to 719 million pounds), it plunged to only 556 million pounds in the first half of 2019.
Retail Prices on the Rise
One area of optimism for the potato industry is the retail price for fresh product. It has increased steadily, and 2019 data so far indicates strong growth. Another boon? Since 2015, month-to-month volatility dropped dramatically. Each line in this chart represents a different month within each year. There are few sharp peaks and valleys in the chart for recent years, meaning prices remained steady through the entire year.
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