U.S. Potato Exports Down

U.S. potato exports decreased for the Marketing year of 2014-15. There were several factors that impacted the lower export numbers: the slowdown in the West Coast Ports from last October through February; that then caused shortages in frozen potato products in customer countries so U.S. products were replaced by other countries’ product; Europeans had low prices and an abundance of processed products as well as the strong U.S. dollar. United States Potato Board Chief Marketing Officer John Toaspern shares that although there was an overall decrease — there were some bright spots
Toaspern: “But exports to our target markets in Asia and Mexico and Central America actually increased for the most part. So despite all of those headwinds we still had a pretty good year and it was a decline in overall exports because frozen is such a large part of the pie. First decline since 2003, and so far we are starting to recover. August is looking good and hopefully we can do some things to regain those lost sales where people switched because of the ports. We can help people understand that even if the U.S product costs a little bit more it is still a better value because it is a higher quality and customers prefer it.”