HERMISTON — Never in his 25 years of farming had Greg Juul seen anything like what happened in the spring.
Juul and his business partner, Troy Betz, own and operate G2 Farming LLC in Hermiston, growing 3,000 acres of potatoes around the area. The vast majority of Oregon’s and Washington’s spud crop comes from the sun-baked Columbia Basin, with its ideal climate and sandy soils.
When planting season began in March, Juul said growers felt confident about supply and demand.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, throwing markets into chaos.
Schools and restaurants were closed, creating an instant glut of potatoes in storage. Lamb Weston, one of the largest processors of french fries in the world, began reducing contracts for potatoes with partner growers around the Northwest, including G2 Farming.
Suddenly, farms were sitting on a billion pounds of potatoes without a home. Juul watched as growers plowed under fields of young spuds, trying to minimize their losses.
“It’s the first time in my lifetime that I’ve seen the potato crop (tilled) in the ground in April,” he said.
Fast-forward seven months, and the 2020 potato harvest is nearly finished with growers reporting solid yields and exceptional quality.
However, Juul said it remains to be seen how quickly the markets can recover.
“I don’t know if those cuts were deep enough,” Juul said. “We might get through the holidays, and depending on what happens — if the economy doesn’t turn around and consumption doesn’t start to rise again — there could definitely be red ink in the 2020 crop.”
‘Everybody lost money’
Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission, raved about this year’s harvest following what he described as a “darn near perfect growing season.” The summer was not too hot, he said, nor did the morning frost arrive too early, both of which can damage tubers.
The only issue was timing, as the pandemic caused a backup of potatoes in the storage shed, which delayed harvest by as much as 35 days for some early varieties.
“Luckily, we had really good weather and we were able to finish on time,” Voigt said. “It all worked out in the end.”
Growers had about 3 billion pounds of potatoes stored from the 2019 harvest on April 1, when COVID-19 began shuttering the food-service industry. Major Northwest processors, including Lamb Weston, Simplot and McCain Foods, could not handle the surplus, Voigt said, and returned about 1 billion pounds of potatoes.
While farms scrambled to get rid of the crop — donating potatoes to food banks, feeding them to livestock or selling them at a discounted rate for dehydration — processors also cut their 2020 contracts anywhere from 10% to 100%, after growers had already invested thousands of dollars per acre renting ground, buying seed and applying fertilizer.
“Everybody lost money when they got their acreage cut,” Voigt said.
In Washington, planted acres of potatoes dropped from 165,000 in 2019 to an estimated 145,000 in 2020, Voigt said. The Trump administration recently approved a second round of direct aid for farmers through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, or CFAP, which he said should help but won’t cover all losses.
Gary Roth, CEO of the Oregon Potato Commission, said potato plantings are down about 15% from 43,000 acres in 2019, though the exact cutbacks varied from grower to grower.
“There were some in the basin on either side of the state line that were really stalwarts in the industry that suffered horrible losses, almost if not completely putting them out of business,” Roth said.
Market recovery
Potatoes are valued at a combined $1.13 billion in Oregon and Washington. Most of the crop, about 90%, is sold to processors with the remaining 10% going to the fresh market.
G2 Farming grows potatoes for a variety of markets, including Lamb Weston french fries, potato chips made by Shearer’s Foods in Hermiston and fresh spuds found in the produce aisle of grocery stores.
Not only did Lamb Weston reduce its contract by 20%, Juul said, but the company was also forced to cut its fresh market acres by another 20%. Though fresh potatoes initially flew off supermarket shelves early in the pandemic — along with other staple foods like beans and rice — Juul said growers did not have the packing capacity to meet surging demand in that market.
”The fresh market has been so tough because of oversupply and changing consumer habits. We’ve lost a lot of fresh market potato growers and storage sheds over the last four to five years,” Juul said. “The fresh market had a hard time meeting that snap, knee-jerk demand.”
Wrapping up this year’s harvest, Juul said the farms saw excellent quality and good, not great, yields with the mild weather. Several weeks of wildfire smoke also affected the amount of sunlight potatoes received, which may have a slight effect on yield.
Whether acreage rebounds in 2021 is still up in the air, though Voigt said he is confident they are in a better spot now than they were seven months ago.
“Based on what I’m hearing, acreage will be up compared to where we were this past year, but not to pre-pandemic levels,” Voigt said.
Roth said contracts will ultimately be driven by how the pandemic continues to unfold this winter, and whether food service can get back to operating at full strength.
”It’s certainly moving more in that direction than it was in the spring,” he said.
October 23, 2020 at 11:00PM
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Columbia Basin farmers finish harvesting potato crop after tumultuous spring - Bend Bulletin
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