5-3 FB Potato Progress

 Potato progress.

  The other day I got a report from the USDA’s National Agricultural statistics service  saying “Temperatures across the state ranged from 2 degrees below normal to 10 degrees above normal for the week. All weather stations reported precipitation. Major agricultural activities included feeding livestock, hauling manure, planting cereal grains, sugarbeets, potatoes and burning ditches.”  on the subject of potatoes, I recently called Frank Muir,  Executive Director of the Idaho Potato Commission  to talk about his Potato across America/Meals on Wheels promotion but then  remembered the notice from the USDA that some planting of potatoes may be down: “last year we were late getting into the fields because of rain, any update there? I’m getting inconsistent information so when I hear that it usually means that normal planting is going on. We’ve had some rain that I don’t have a sense that would have issues with this planting. As we finish off the current year, it looks like we had just about right sized harvests from last year, it doesn’t look like we will have a lot of potatoes rolling into next year which is a good position to be in. What we are looking at is a very very successful year. The way we’re looking at the harvest for the coming year and anticipating what is going to be planted and increased contracts that we are hearing about with processors, we think it will be another great year for Idaho farmers.