PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The Maine Potato Board is watching developments overseas and what it could mean for future exports for the potato industry, now that China’s Ministry of Agriculture has stated that the country will boost production to make the potato one of the nation’s staple foods.
Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, said the announcement will not have a major direct impact on the Maine potato industry, since there is “no way that Maine would export potatoes to China.”
But he said that it may open up markets for western potato growers to market their potatoes to China, which could increase the demand for Maine potatoes in other markets across the United States.
“Anything that opens up markets for our potatoes in this country is good,” Flannery said late last week. “But I doubt that this decision is going to have much of an impact on us. Just the expense of shipping potatoes to China is too much.”
According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service report highlighted by the Maine Potato Board last week, China’s Ministry of Agriculture stated that China was boosting its potato production and consumption to transform the crop into the country’s fourth major staple after rice, wheat and corn. The Ministry of Agriculture is looking to expand potato acreage to 10 million hectares by 2020 from the current 5.6 million hectares, or roughly 14 millions acres, without using land currently used for rice, wheat and corn production.
The potato is not a popular food in China in spite of being widely grown and the country already being the world’s largest potato producer.
The U.S. ranks fifth in the world among potato-producing countries, harvesting about 19 million metric tons in 2012, according to potatopro.com. A metric ton is about 2,200 pounds. Ahead of the U.S. in the rankings are China, India, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, with China at the top, growing nearly 86 million metric tons that year.
Maine is the ninth-largest potato-producing state in America, producing about 726,000 metric tons annually, according to the National Potato Council.
The Chinese government has provided financial resources for research and development to identify new food uses for the potato to make it attractive and widely consumed in the local diet.