Volumes of Russet and white potatoes are good while yellows and reds seem to be slimmer.
“There are still plenty of Russets in Idaho and Canada and I’ve got plenty of whites available to ship. But we hit a tight window on the reds and yellows,” says Ken Gad of South Easton, MA-based Cambridge Farms Inc. Part of the reasons is looking at supplies out Florida. “We ran out in Florida. There was still a need for yellows but the rain came in and pushed us back and we were pushing a little too fast to get into these fields and they weren’t quite mature enough. There’s also more demand than we thought for what we had.”
Looking ahead though, a leveling out of the market is in store. “Into next week, we’ll have more product online and we should be able to get to where supply and demand are pretty much equal,” Gad says.
Indeed, there are some changes happening from a demand perspective for potatoes. During the pandemic, shoppers largely migrated to online shopping to stay out of stores. “The impulse buy was gone. But now with regulations lifting and people going back into stores, you will see an uptick in purchasing at store level because the impulse buy will be back,” he says.
The role of foodservice
At the same time, foodservice outlets are opening back up and potatoes are a popular foodservice item. “Foodservice will replace some of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program that we started seeing this time last year. We don’t have the food box coming into play right now and for growers, it helped them immensely with their number two product,” says Gad.
As for pricing, the limited supplies of reds and yellows are reflected in pricing currently. “And overall I think pricing is going to stay relatively strong for the next month,” says Gad. “We’ve also been able to see a real increase in the FOBs over the past couple of years because of the limited amount of growers we have, limited acreage and the pull that we can get now.”
Looking ahead, some Texas supplies of fresh crop potatoes will come on in the next few weeks as well as Virginia supplies. And in late July and into early August, volumes will also come out of Wisconsin and Minnesota which will take some pressure off the red and yellow markets particularly.
For more information:
Ken Gad
Cambridge Farms Inc.
Tel: +1 508-297-2630
Ken@CambridgeFarms.com
https://cambridgefarms.wordpress.com/