Blair Richardson told the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers conference that 20 years ago, the U.S. controlled about 55% of the global potato export market, but now, it’s closer to 23%. “We’ve lost a lot of market share, but during that period of time, we’ve almost doubled our exports of potatoes, so we’ve increased our exports, lost massive market share, and what that means is demand for our products is growing more rapidly around the world than we can keep up with.”
Despite massive increases in European potato production, they can’t keep up with demand. Richardson: “They are so concerned that they can’t get all of the product they need for their frozen products, the frozen processors increased their contract prices by 40% this year. That’s on top of the 25% increase last year, and they still are not going to be able to fully contract all of the acreage they need to supply their processing plants.”
Source: brownfieldagnews.com