Washington State Potato Commission plans for the long term

China, consumers, corporate stewardship, water, all topics to watch

MOSES LAKE — Ninety-one percent of the potato industry representatives surveyed feel the Washington State Potato Commission is doing a good job.

Commission Executive Director Chris Voigt said roughly 63 people were quizzed, of about 300 members directly tied to the potato industry. The intent was to get an idea of growers' thoughts of the commission and its performance, and find out what challenges they foresee on the horizon.

"It came out fairly positive," Voigt said. "That was reassuring for us to hear, that there's such strong industry support for the potato commission."

The survey results kicked off a recent long-range planning session held earlier this month in the Tri-Cities. Voigt said commission staff identified four major trends they expect to have a major impact upon the potato industry: The Chinese potato market, changing consumer demographics, the role of sustainable agriculture and natural resource management.

China may be able to increase potato production and compete with the state and nation on the global market, Voigt said, exporting to some of the same markets. A speaker during the session told the commission China's biggest challenges include infrastructure, getting crop to market and input supplies of fertilizers and chemicals. Once those issues are dealt with, China could be a major player.

"We export about 50 percent of our crop overseas and if all of a sudden China decides to become a big player in this industry, we essentially won't be able to export (that much)," Voigt said. "It'll be some competition."

The commission intends to "aggressively" pursue further exports and opening new markets for Washington potatoes, Voigt said.

"Once we start seeing China develop their potato industry, we're going to have to take a step back and re-evaluate what the next steps are," he said.

The best consumers of potatoes are households with children, Voigt said. But once those children move out or go to college, the households stop cooking so much, and stop eating as many potatoes.

"As our baby boomers become empty nesters, the biggest group of our best customers are now going to be some of our worst customers," Voigt said.

But those baby boomers now have more disposable income and tend to eat out more often, he added, which means there's more opportunities in sell potatoes in food service.

Several of the nation's large food service distributors recently asked their potato suppliers for a corporate stewardship policy, and ensuring growers are taking such steps as paying employees fairly, taking care of the environment and reducing pesticide use.

"That is a concern for us because we don't want some guy in a cubicle making all these decisions, not knowing what it's like to farm," Voigt said. "We just need a seat at the table to say, 'A lot of these things that you're asking are possible. We can probably do them, but this is the added cost, or here are some of the tradeoffs.'"

For example, to reduce the amount of trips across the field in a tractor for tillage, growers must rely more on herbicide use, Voigt said. Or, growers could reduce pesticide use by 50 percent if they're able to use genetically modified potatoes resistant to a lot of diseases.

"Giving them those types of choices and then letting them make it," he said. "We feel it's very important to have that seat at that table, rather than having them dictate those changes to us, to have a seat at the table to have some input on giving them some different options and what the costs are with it."

At their meeting, the commission received updates on Columbia River water management, and also heard about partnering with environmental groups. It's a matter of finding common ground to work together, Voigt said.

"We realize that if we lose water, whether it's the Odessa going dry or not being able to take water out of the Columbia for irrigation because of endangered fish, we're done," he said. "We're out of business. It doesn't matter what other issue the commission deals with - if we don't have water, we can't grow a crop. So that's a pretty high priority for us."