Chip potato movement is picking up. Michigan shipped 96,000 cwt during the week ending Aug. 10, up from 15,000 cwt shipped a week earlier. Wisconsin’s harvest is underway. Growers in Maine and the Red River Valley started digging chip potatoes last week. The harvest is winding down in Virginia. Harvest is complete in North Carolina. U.S. chip potato shipments for the week ending Aug. 10 totaled 812,300 cwt, up from 783,110 cwt a year ago. Michigan’s table potato harvest is also underway. New-crop table potato shipments totaled 16,900 cwt during the week ending Aug. 10.
North American Potato Market News (NAPMN) expects U.S. growers to produce 427.2 million cwt of potatoes during 2024. That is 13.55 million cwt less than the current estimate for the 2023 crop, a 3.1% decline. Growers are likely to harvest 937,200 acres of potatoes this year, 23,000 acres less than they harvested from the 2023 crop. NAPMN is projecting a national average yield of 456 cwt per acre. That falls 5 cwt per acre below the 20-year trend yield. If realized, this year’s potato crop would be 1.8% larger than the five-year average. Potato crops were planted earlier than usual in several major growing regions. With a few exceptions, summer growing conditions have been mostly favorable across the country. During the previous two years, market conditions encouraged growers to begin harvest earlier than usual. The opposite situation has occurred this year. Growers in most of the storage states are just getting ready to harvest. The combination of early planting, favorable growing conditions, and a few extra growing days could lead to larger yields than we are currently projecting. Nevertheless, it is early August and a lot that can change between now and the end of the harvest season.
U.S. packers shipped 1.525 million cwt of table potatoes during the week ending Aug. 10. That is up from 1.467 million cwt shipped a year earlier. Michigan packers shipped 36,375 cwt of potatoes during the week ending Aug. 10. That is up from 28,243 cwt shipped during the same week in 2023. Last week’s Michigan shipments were 91.3% russets, 7.4% round white potatoes, and 1.2% yellow potatoes.
Wisconsin packers are selling 10/5-pound bales of new-crop size A yellow potatoes for mostly $24-$25 per bale. They are selling 50-pound cartons of size A yellow potatoes for mostly $23.50-$24 per 50-pound box.
The weighted average shipping point price for Idaho Russet Burbanks is $12.30 per cwt, up from $12.09 per cwt a week ago.
Report by North American Potato Market News