12-12 FB More $ Potatoes

Is Idaho the potato state or should it be called the corn state? That one can get me in trouble. I’ll be back to defend myself in a minute. In a conversation with Tom Kurtz of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, I found out that the most recent corn acreage numbers that we have for Idaho in terms of number of acres planted, there were over 350,000  under cornand if you look at our potato acres it’s 320,000 acres. That said, Tom talks about the economic impact of potatoes versus corn.  “Technically there are more acres of corn then there are acres of potatoes but the production value is still way higher for potatoes then it would be for corn. Why is that Tom? Because you have a higher price for the potatoes. Granted this is 2010, but it will give you an idea of the magnitude of the difference, I guess you would say, if you look at the production value of potatoes he was over $900 million, the value of corn production was $107 million. That does not include silage. So when you’re talking 110 million for corn versus 900 million for potatoes you can see that even though there are more acres of corn it won’t come anywhere near the value of production for potatoes.