08/04/06 Wa. Potato Commission 50 year history

Farm and Ranch August 4, 2006 The Washington State Potato Commission continues to celebrate 50 years of serving and representing the state's potato growers. Commission Executive Director Chris Voigt says part of that celebration will include the publishing this coming October of a history of the Commission. Voigt: "One of things we are doing is an historical perspective. We have hired a local author, Dennis Clay. He is going to be working with us and this fall we are going to be releasing kind of an insert that will be put into a lot of the daily newspapers taking a chronicle and historical look at the past 50 years, and to celebrate the past and the accomplishments the potato industry has made over the last 50 years." It was the Columbia Basin Reclamation Project and the water it brought that allowed agriculture and potatoes to flourish in the desert. Voigt: "Really potatoes have taken off and are really the bread and butter for so many communities. We are worth over three-billion dollars to the state's economy and that says something right there." Voigt says they call potatoes a money crop because in a good year farmers can make money, but it is also the most expensive vegetable crop to grow with upwards of 25-hundred dollars an acre in inputs. That means farmers lose big in an off year. The Commission will also celebrate its golden anniversary with an eye to the next 50 years, with a long-range planning retreat coupled with its quarterly meeting in December. That's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report. Brought to you in part by the Washington State Potato Commission. Nutrition today! Good health tomorrow! I'm Bob Hoff on the Northwest Ag Information Network.