Prince Edward Island potato growers continue to shake at the bars of the cage American government regulators have locked them in.
Growers in the rest of the country are anxiously watching the situation, hoping the influential American potato lobby isn’t able to expand the border ban on P.E.I. potatoes to any other province.
“We are a little bit worried that the influence from the United States has gone too far and they’re telling us what to do,” said the president of the Saskatchewan Seed Potato Growers Association, John Konst, during the organization’s annual meeting.
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“Idaho is always thinking it’s losing market and tries to interrupt Canadian shipments.”
U.S. officials shut the border to P.E.I. potatoes this fall after potato wart disease was found in one field on the island.
Even though the farmer quarantined the area and 10,000 soil samples around P.E.I. found the wart only in the one patch where it was first discovered, American officials have not reopened the border.
Ivan Noonan, the manager of the P.E.I. Potato Board, said the border ban has stopped more than 2,200 loads of potatoes going south.
“It’s a major catastrophe,” he said.
“We missed the U.S. Thanksgiving and the U.S. Christmas market this year.”
Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture seemed to be on the verge of reopening the border, Noonan said, but kept backing off. He attributes that to political pressure brought by the potato lobby.
“It’s not the USDA,” said Noonan. “It’s the National Potato Council putting pressure on the USDA to continue.”
Potato wart is a fungus. It is very uncommon, but sporadically appears throughout potato growing regions. This year it showed up in six Dutch fields. In the 1980s it appeared in Maryland.
The fungus’ spores can remain viable in the soil for decades, Noonan said. The site of the P.E.I. infection is where an old garden used to be.
