After hitting a high of 100,000 acres of potatoes in 2003, Manitoba producers harvested only 69,000 acres in 2010, based on Statistics Canada data.
“Whether it has bottomed out or not yet, we don’t know,” said Garry Sloik, Keystone Potato Producers general manager. “We hope they don’t (continue to fall) but it’s a possibility.”
Statistics Canada’s potato production report for 2010 illustrates how potato acres have consistently dropped in Manitoba, and across Canada, over the last several years.
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Canadian area was 344,000 acres this year, down 15 percent since 2007.
Several factors are driving the decline, including exchange rates, falling demand for french fries and the economic depression in the U.S., Sloik said.
“A big factor that’s been there the last couple of years is the Canadian dollar,” he said.
With a strong dollar, it’s difficult for Canadian producers to compete with potato growers in Washington, who have several natural advantages, Sloik said.
“They have some huge yields. They’re growing the same potatoes we do and they have a couple of months longer (for a growing season)…. They can deliver off field from July on into November. So there’s no storage needed for those potatoes.”
Weak demand and a dollar near par are part of the equation, said Brian Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture potato specialist. But the loss of 30,000 potato acres in the province since 2003 is also about farmers moving away from dryland production.
In 2003, farmers planted 30,000 acres of process potatoes on non-irrigated land.
“This summer, we probably had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,000 acres of non-irrigated potatoes,” he said.
However the acreage loss in Manitoba this year is directly related to processors cutting contract volumes, Wilson said.
McCain, which has plants in Carberry and Portage la Prairie, Man., and Cavendish Farms, which operates a plant in Jamestown, North Dakota, both reduced the size of their contracts in 2010.
On the positive side, potato yields are rising in Manitoba.
The long-term average for Manitoba growers is 240 hundredweight per acre. But in the last several years, that has grown to 280 cwt.
“In Manitoba, our yields are coming up. So we really need less acres to supply the same volume of potatoes,” Wilson said.
It’s too early to say if acres will continue to fall in Canada and in Manitoba, Wilson said.
This spring, processors in the region cut prices in contracts with producers due to a glut of potatoes on the market.
———
2007 54.8
2008 52.0
2009 49.7
9.5
9.5
8.0
84.5
81.0
77.5
