8-16 FB Potato Middles 2

 Yesterday we discussed what potatoes closing middles meant to potato farmers and we passed that information along to you folks in our listening audience. Now that we know what the term means let’s ask the next question and that is… are potatoes closing middles?

The maturity of our potato crop is critical to the state’s economy and so we checked in with and a NASS spokesperson Vince Matthews: “The use for it is, is as a comparison and we have that number but we also show what it was last year and what it is on average over the past 5 years. To just place this year’s development, how does it compare and where do we stand in terms of how the crop is doing. The crop is doing fine? It says 2011… 100%, 2010… 90%, average 95%. Okay. It means on that date when we got the reports written, 100% of the potato acreage was at that stage that we called closing middles or growing all the way across the furrows so that when you look out across the field, it is solid with the plants. So it is 100% this year and last year it was 90% and that’s great.