12/19/06 Potatoes and Fruit

You may wonder what growing spuds and tree fruit have in common. More than you might think according to Jerry Heilig with the Washington-Oregon United Fresh Potato Grower's Association. HEILIG: About 2 years ago, slightly over 2 years ago a group of growers in Idaho got together and as a result of some pretty depressed prices for an extended period of time we're trying to figure out how we could kind of help out ourselves and maybe do some things a little bit different in the future. Seems the tree fruit industry has been thinking along the same lines. Heilig says it's important for the industry to support individuals. HEILIG: One of the things that we all as individual producers of agricultural commodities, there's something very inherent about being; having that individuality if you will so we want to do as much as we can to maintain that. And while the northwest produces the bulk of potatoes in the U.S. competition can sometimes be detrimental. HEILIG: And there's been a tremendous amount of competition between these two states particularly Washington and Idaho over time, sometimes to our own detriment. And so hopefully we're going to be able to bury some of that undo competition to work closer together to maintain a market that's profitable for all of us. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.