Plumes of dust rise from the dry earth of a potato field on Homedale Road.
The once leafy green tops have shriveled and dried up and they crunch underfoot, killed by a frost several weeks prior. Beneath the parched earth, Norcoda russets wait for Ross Fleming to harvest them.
“You have to let them freeze so the skins will set,” Fleming said Tuesday. “These are going right to the packing plant.”
< Women sort
freshly washed potatoes by pulling out odd, damaged
or misshapen ones at Tulelake Distributors in
Tulelake
Fleming had just begun to dig his
potatoes, and had finished 10 acres of the 200 he
planted.
This is similar to years past, he said,
but one change is how straight and even his rows
are. His satellite-equipped tractor eliminated a
guess row and ensured him even planting.
This is a good year to be a potato farmer.
In fact it’s a good year to be nay kind of a farmer
in the Basin.
Prices for potatoes have risen because
fewer farmers planted them this year, choosing
instead to plant other cash crops.
“Ethanol is really what changed the market
on potatoes,” Fleming said. “This should be a
profitable year.”
Potato farmers in the Klamath Basin are
feeling the same pinch as those who plant other cash
crops. Inputs have risen, and fuel and fertilizer
costs have increased dramatically.
Fleming points to his tractor.
“That tractor used
to burn $100 a day, now it’s burning $500.”
Less competition
As the acreage of potatoes planted in the
Klamath Basin plummets, farmers experience less
competition on the open market.
It isn’t every year that potato farmers
come out ahead. Depending on the number of potatoes
harvested, the going price is sometimes less than
what it costs to plant them, farmers say.
“Over the last four years we’ve seen at
least break-even prices to the grower,” said Dan
Chin of Wong’s Potatoes. “That’s kind of unheard
of.”
Chin believes United Potato Growers of the
Klamath Basin, an arm of the national organization,
has helped to ensure potato growers good returns on
their crops.
“Farmers, sometimes, we’re too good at
what we do,” Chin said. “Potatoes are a really,
really perishable commodity. If you over-produce it,
you still have to sell … You can’t keep it, you
actually have to sell it within a year’s time.”
While some potatoes go straight from the
field to processing plants to store
shelves, much of the fall harvest gets put in
storage.
Figures released by the National Agricultural
Statistics Service, a branch of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, show that in 2007, 18 million
hundredweight of potatoes were stored in Oregon as
of Dec. 1. A hundredweight equals 100 pounds.
By June 1, that number dropped to 4.2
million.
Chin said so far the harvest has been
excellent, although the weather has been warm and
that’s not good for storing potatoes.
“We’re seeing good quality potatoes with
average to above average yields,” Chin said.
Workers busy
In Tulelake, Tulelake
Distributors workers were busy sorting washed
potatoes fresh from the field. Huge piles of russet
potatoes moved along conveyor
belts, going from a mud black to golden brown in a
few washes.
From there, workers pull the blemished,
misshapen and odd potatoes out and men sort them
into large and small groups. A machine weighs them
and fills bags and boxes with almost uniform potato
weights.
Co-owner Debra Matthews explains that at
the fresh-pack facility, potatoes are prepared for
delivery to chain stores mostly in the
Pacific Northwest.
“With the potato shortage this year, we
shipped all over the U.S. and it’s been a few years
since we’ve done that,” Matthews said. “There’s not
many industries making money right now — agriculture
is.”
Waiting to be shipped
Tulelake Distributors has storage
facilities as well, where some potatoes
will wait up to nine months before being shipped to
retailers.
But for Matthews’ business, there is
growth in fresh refrigerated products. Consumers are
purchasing potatoes pre-mashed or scalloped in
different varieties.
“Everybody’s looking at a way to look at
the value added sector,” Williams said.
