Capital Press Misprint

Several weeks ago, we reported on a story describing an impasse between the Southern Idaho Potato Cooperative and Lamb Weston, a division of ConAgra Foods. The gyst of the argument was that SIPCO had contracts with J.R. Simplot Company, Heinz Foods, McCain Foods and ConAgra for the price of the ’09 potato crop and at the last minute, in the words of Dan Hargraves, Executive Director of SIPCO,  ConAgra said  they were just going to go to the field with their own price.

The Capital Press newspaper has run an article saying that Idaho potato growers have taken a vote and agreed to contract modifications. “No that’s wrong, that’s a misprint, I heard that they published something like that but no we went in last week and met with Simplot and came up with what we thought was an acceptable counter-proposal but we have not taken it for a vote yet. Probably not going to happen for at least a week.

And Hargraves doesn’t sound optimistic. “It’s a mess, quite frankly, you’d think that in a time like this, you’d come together and work on these things, and I think Simplot, Heinz, McCain, they’re reaching out to the growers trying to reach a solution that’s long term, ConAgra…not so much.”