1/13/09 Sustainable Potato

Sustainable Potatoes. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The first annual conference and trade show that brought together the entire U.S. Potato industry wrapped up last Friday in San Antonio, Texas. The theme of the show was "Achieving a Sustainable Future." Gene Kahn is the VP; Global Sustainability Officer for General Mills describes in layman terms what sustainability is. KAHN: There are no sustainability experts. You guys know as much about sustainability today than anybody else in the country. Farmers know more about sustainability I would say because they have a unique perspective on it and its called common sense. The other thing is a lot of people think of sustainability as some kind of undefined and complicated idea, if you've got kids, if you care about kids, if you think about their future then you're thinking about sustainability. Kahn began his career in the 70's as a potato farmer in Washington State and was a pioneer in the Organic Food & Farming movement and admits that his initial notions about farming were wrong. KAHN: I started out with this romantic notion about agriculture as a return to the past. I hated technology. I was one of those typical guys who thought that everything that we are doing today was wrong - that we had to go back to an earlier time. Sometimes when you are starting out you have what you think are great ideas and Kahn says it might just be off base a bit. KAHN: This was one of my first, biggest failures. It worked from a potato utilization perspective but I forgot to think of a very simple point, that if you are eating potato chips, organic isn't top of mind. But Kahn says that sustainability goes beyond environmental sustainability. It is also social and economic and he says that all businesses should look at and address the issue. KAHN: We developed a functional definition, and it's basically a commitment made by any organization, any grower, any individual to do an assessment, to evaluate your environmental impact and then to acknowledge it, to own it. This was the first time all 4 sectors of the potato industry came together for one meeting. Nearly 1000 potato growers attended the meeting. The Potato Expo is planning their second annual meeting in December of this year in Orlando, Florida. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.