1/5/09 Potato Expo

Potato Expo. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. If you are involved in the potato industry you should be making plans now to be in San Antonio this week for the first annual Potato Expo 2009. It is a first of sorts that will bring together all facets of the industry according to John Keeling, Executive VP and CEO of the National Potato Council. KEELING: This is the first time in history that you'll ever have a potato event that's really for everybody in the industry and the level of turnout that we're seeing and the registration levels we're seeing are indicating that people who are in the business feel they definitely need to be there to hear the combination of speakers and also just the interaction with the other members of the industry. According to Keeling the sessions will feature good information for everyone. KEELING: We'll have general sessions where we'll have speakers of interest to everybody in the industry across the board and then we'll also have sector breakouts for the chip sector, for the frozen processed sector, for the seed sector, for the fresh sector where speakers will present on individual issues of importance to those specific sectors Interestingly, this is the first time all the different parts of the potato industry have gotten together. KEELING: Once it started happening it seemed like clearly an idea whose time had come by the responses we have been getting. But I don't know. We had always had the NPC Annual meeting and there had been the seed seminar but we just never really had anything that was for everybody and the idea came about through some discussions with the United States Potato Board we decided to go forward with it and have met real enthusiastic support the whole time. I will be traveling to San Antonio this week to report on the Expo on behalf of the NPC and US Potato Board. The Expo runs this Wednesday through Friday at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. Keeling says it will especially helpful for producers who deal in multiple areas of the industry. KEELING: This gives people a lot of flexibility. A lot of potato growers are participants in various sectors of the industry. They may be processed growers but they may also be fresh growers so this allows them to really hone in on speakers that they're interested in or a particular topic so we think it's going to allow a lot of flexibility and that's helped generate the interest. For more information visit their website at www.potato-expo.com That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.