Potato school

At the recent potato conference in Pocatello, I talked with Travis Blacker, industry relations director for the Idaho Potato Commission, and he told me all about the Potato Conference itself, otherwise known as Potato School. David Sparks, Idaho Egg today. Speaker2: This is a pretty big deal for our industry. It starts on a Tuesday. It's from 9 to 5, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then it ends Thursday at 1:00 in the afternoon. But it draws in a lot of growers from all over Idaho and then even growers from Montana and Washington and Colorado. I've even seen people from Canada come into this show. As you can see, there's just all sorts of equipment dealers here. They can stop in a different booth and find out the latest technology, the latest equipment and stuff that can help them out on their farm. And then over in the student union building, they've got all sorts of classes and stuff that they can take to learn different things about how to improve their yields, how to improve their quality, how to deal with different diseases and pests. They're able to get their pesticide credits for attending these classes over there, which growers need to be able to apply their chemicals and their their pesticides. Just all sorts of different classes on how to deal with nematodes, with other pests, with aphids, how to keep the disease pressure down on their potatoes, their crops, just all sorts of different classes on how to deal with that kind of stuff. So it's really a big deal. You know, it's kind of a downtime for our growers. They're kind of getting ready to start planting in a couple of months, so it's a good chance for them to come out and talk with the dealers in the industry. Speaker1: This year's conference held at Idaho State University in Pocatello, January 18th through 19.