Potato Review

Better rail servicemeans more transportoptions forMaine’spotato farms RAILROAD improvements, combined with industry determination, have dramatically changed potato transport for Maine in the US, according to Aroostook County supplier Jay LaJoie. In recent years, using rail from Aroostook County to ship crops to market was too costly, and there was a shortage of refrigerated cars. But railroads across the country have been investing in sta ng and equipment and improving tracks. While a shortage of truckers continues across the whole country, Jay said the future of shipping potatoes by train looks promising. Each car will accommodate 80 tons of potatoes, which is equivalent to four legal truckloads. Since December, his company has shipped more than 3,000 tons of potatoes for chips, fries and other food products from all over the county. A number of area farms, from Houlton to Ashland and into the St. John Valley, have also been hauling surplus processing potatoes to Van Buren, where they are loaded and sent down the tracks. “Futuristically, I’d like to see more shipped out via rail — not only potatoes, but wood products and others,” Jay said in an interview with The Bangor Daily News. “I would describe the rail market right now as a growing business.” 48 POTATO REVIEW MARCH/APRIL 2022 INTERNATIONAL It’s a dog’s life … AN American woman has trained her dogs to sni out potato diseases, and is to work alongside seed potato certification programmes. A recent article in the Idaho State Journal described how Andrea Parish’s dogs can identify infected potatoes 48 hours after inocculation. Her business, entitled, Nose Knows Scouting, works with storage facilities and in fields spanning an area from Washington to Maine, and was launched in 2019. Zora, her black Labrador retriever and Dudley, a yellow Lab named Dudley, are trained in PVY detection, while Raya, a Vizsla-Lab mix, is trained in bacterial ring rot detection. The PVY detection service is most in demand, she said. Her dogs will run through the ventilation tubes, called the plenum, beneath seed potatoes in storage and sni through the holes above for infected tubers. Powdery scab, potato wart and nematode detection could be added to the company’s o ering in the future. MAINE’S latest potato crop was so big that railroads were being used for the first time in 40 years to transport it. The 2021 harvest made history for its size — a roughly 20% greater yield than normal, thanks to near-perfect growing conditions. USpotato industryadapting topandemic challenges US consumers are still less facing a smaller choice of potatoes when they shop than they did before the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been claimed. Michigan Potato Industry Commission representative Kelly Turner says processors face several shortages, which in turn is filtering down to end-users. Kelly said that, two years into the pandemic, there was an initial spike for shelf-stable products and demand has held steady. “We still see a higher demand for fresh stock and chip potatoes than pre- pandemic,” she recently told Fresh Plaza. Shortages of workers, edible oil and packaging have created more collaboration along the food supply chain, she added.