The Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota already has a serious truck shortage , and the season hasn’t even really got going. Here’s an update on potato shipments out the valley.
Red River Valley Potato Shipments
Not even one-third of the potato shippers in North Dakota and Minnesota are loading potatoes yet, but the few who are tell of difficulties finding trucks. For example, last Friday, Associated Potato Growers in Grand Forks was 7 trucks short of what was needed to fill orders from customers. APG hasn’t really got into volume shipments yet and has opened up only one of it three plants. Other valley shippers are reporting similar problems.
Last season the Red River Valley shipped about 4 million hundredweight (cwt.) of mostly red potatoes and totals this season (2014-15) should be similar, if not a little more. Once the harvest is completed within the next week or two, a better idea of the exact numbers should become available.
The Red River Valley’s red potato acreage is expected to be up one or two percent this year. In 2013, the valley produced 23,000 acres of red potatoes. North Dakota produces a total of about 90,000 acres of potatoes. Beyond red potatoes, these are mostly russets that are virtually dedicated to the processing market. In addition to red potato shipments, there are yellow potatoes, which will represent about 8 percent of the fresh shipments.
Overall, it is expected there will be about 4.2 million and 4.5 million cwt shipped for the fresh market; over 90 percent would be reds, the remainder yellows.
Red River Valley potatoes – grossing about $2800 to Dallas.