What Happened

You may remember that we have done several stories about Eastern Idaho farmers donating potatoes from their farms to food banks all over Idaho. Randy Hardy of Hardy Farms in Oakley Idaho can provide you with an explanation.

It was fantastic. Clear up until the virus hit. I was telling people I farmed for 48 years waiting for a year like this because it kind of was the perfect storm. We had a few less acres, so less potatoes and it looked like it could be a good marketing year. And I happened to have a good crop, pretty good yields and excellent quality. So I was kind of licking my chops thinking this is going to be a real good year. And just prior to that, hitting, our fresh returns are twelve, thirteen dollars. Our market was really good for another week or so. Food service slowed down, but retail was asking for more because everybody's starting to go the grocery stores. But it's starting to affect this because our sheds built for probably 85 percent food service cartons and we do some consumer bags, but it's not our focus. And so all of a sudden, it was retail, it was wanting potatoes. And so we were trying to figure out how to move our carton stuff to retail and commission started pushing bigger size bags, bigger size profile potatoes in 15, 20 pound bag. We got some of that market. So it was a real slow down for about a month.