11/25/08 Potatoes

Potatoes. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. This holiday, one of the staples on the table will probably be potatoes. Mashed, boiled, baked, scalloped or any other variety, the potato is always a favorite. Bart Conners is the Chairman of the Board for the U.S. Potato Board from Pasco, Washington and they have been busy this year promoting the potato. CONNERS: Probably the biggest thing we're doing this year is our "Potatoes, Goodness Unearthed." It's a new promotional program where we're actually buying some advertisements in some ladies magazines that kind of are focused on our target audience which would be women at home with children, 25-45. We kind of think that's the best bang for our buck as far as people that are buying potatoes. Part of the overall campaign is something called "Peel Back the Truth" where they are hoping to show the true information behind the potato and not the hype of several fad diets from a couple of years ago. CONNERS: We're trying to basically educate the consumer and the whole bad carb, bad nutritional facts on potatoes  a lot of that is really false. And what we are trying to do is get that message back out into the public eye. You know we are doing a lot of that again with this campaign. We've got a lot of things going on outside of that. We're doing it on a retail basis with some POP. POP is point of purchase. In other words, when you pick out those potatoes at the store look around for their marketing information. There really is nothing more down home than the old thought of meat and potatoes. CONNERS: I think that is actually the basis. We kind of actually really did a lot of research behind this new campaign and really trying to find a medium or message that really resonated with consumers and you know the hard part about potatoes is they are kind of that mom and pa which is where we were back when we were kids. We're trying to make it a little more contemporary. The bottom line is this&a medium potato eaten with the skin on is only 110 calories. It has nearly half of the daily vitamin C required and is one of the best sources of potassium and fiber. The problem comes in when you pile butter, sour cream and whatever else on it. CONNERS: The hard part with all commodities or with anything that you've done for a long time is reinventing yourself and I guess this is the Potato Board's idea to reinvent ourselves to our consumers. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.