Potato growers throw the dice
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 | 12:54 PM ET
by Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca
There is this image of the potato farmer as the staid, conservative type, not interested in taking chances, taking life as it comes.
Twelve years of living on P.E.I. has shattered that image. Potato prices are like oil prices on uppers. Soaring before suddenly crashing, sometimes weeks before harvest. I spoke recently with a farmer who was getting five cents a pound at the farm gate in December, and 20 cents a pound in early June.
The risks are big, and farmers need to pay attention to them. Selling at the right time can mean the difference between a big profit and a big loss. And keep in mind potatoes are perishable. You can't hold them forever.
Not all farmers like that risk, and for them there is growing potatoes for french fry makers such as Cavendish Farms and McCain. These farmers grow under contract, with prices set before the crop goes into the ground and sales guaranteed, so long as the quality is there.
Prices can crash weeks before harvest (CBC)
But not this year. Soaring prices for grains have farmers planting corn as if they are preparing for tortilla heaven, and since there is only so much farmed land potato acres are down across the continent.
The expectation of reduced supply already has potato prices up, and P.E.I. farmers believe they can hold. They've rejected three separate contract offers from Cavendish Farms.
There's still time — a contract could be signed up to Aug. 15 — but Cavendish Farms has said it believes its last offer is fair. There is no word of further negotiations yet, and the potato growers could find themselves selling on the open market for the first time in years.
And maybe, this year, making some good money doing it.
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From trends and culture to politics and nutrition, Food Bytes serves up tasty tidbits about food and the issues surrounding it that flavour our everyday lives.
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Amber Hildebrandt writes for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and "foodie" ways.
Andrea Chiu is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
Tara Kimura is the consumer life reporter for CBCNews.ca, covering a wide range of issues that range from rising food costs and the growing organic movement, to new trends in the marketplace.
Andree Lau is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
Jessica Wong is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
Elizabeth Bridge is a writer with the CBC Digital Archives in Toronto. She first ventured into the kitchen as a child to indulge a sweet tooth by baking cookies and making fudge. A student budget compelled her to be a vegetarian (for a while) and instilled in her an ongoing curiosity about food and cooking.
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Comments
Paul T
Alberta
Imagine that, farmers being allowed to sell their produce!!! How un-canadian... wait.. right, I forgot they aren't selling wheat from Western Canada. So that makes it OK then.
Posted July 10, 2008 07:34 AM