North Carolina potato yield is low, but quality is high

Potato salad and potato chips at July Fourth celebrations could likely be made from North Carolina potatoes.

In Pasquotank and Camden counties, where potatoes are big business, about 60 percent of the local potatoes are sold for potato chips. The rest are sold as "table stock," which is what most consumers see in the grocery store.

Record high temperatures in early June stopped most of the potato plants' growth early, said Tom Campbell, agricultural extension agent in Pasquotank County, resulting in lower local yields.

But as evidenced in a test field harvested Wednesday, the quality of those potatoes is good.

"Overall size and yield were down with the primary culprit being the dry weather as the varieties were entering the later part of the bulking phase," Mark Clough, a researcher for North Carolina State University's Potato Breeding and Genetics Program, wrote in an e-mail. "That said, the quality was very good, there were few pick outs (culls) and low incidence of internal problems."

Combined with the fact that weather problems have been worse elsewhere, North Carolina potatoes are in great demand, said Tommy Fleetwood of the North Carolina Potato Association.

For example, a drought last year created a shortage of potatoes grown and stored in Northern states, such as New York, Michigan and Maine. The storage crop that normally lasts through mid-June began to dwindle this year in mid-May, Fleetwood said.

The flooding in the Midwest also stalled deliveries of Western potatoes by railroad, he said.

"As far as this year goes, the market looks extremely good for North Carolina," Fleetwood said.

Local farmers are trying to fill orders before the July Fourth holiday when demand typically drops, Campbell said.

"They have to chisel through some hard, dusty ground," he said. "But the market is so brisk... farmers are trying to keep up with the orders."

That scenario was evident in the quarter-acre test field at Kenneth R. Bateman Farm in Pasquotank County.

Planted in March, the rows were topped Wednesday with crispy, brown plants. Pulling a potato digger behind a tractor, Clough dug up the rows. As the dirt, plants and potatoes were pulled from the ground, they were separated over a grate and the potatoes toppled off the back and onto the newly dug ground.

A group of eight helped gather the unearthed potatoes, placing them in one of the 64 bins marked with each potato's name. Five of the 21 test varieties remained in the ground because they are russet potatoes and have a longer growing period.

The harvested potatoes were carried to James Bros. Inc., a Weeksville farm, for grading.

Potatoes in each gray, plastic bin were sorted by size and counted. Bad potatoes, or culls, were removed from the batch.

After the sorted potatoes were weighed and the information marked on a spreadsheet, the bins were passed to Per McCord, a North Carolina State University doctoral candidate. He picked 10 from each bin, quartered them and looked for internal anomalies, such as hollow cavities.

He was largely unsuccessful.

"Here's one," he said, holding up a quartered potato. "It's very slight, but it's the kind of thing we're looking for."

He noted the faint brown splotch, or "heat necrosis," and then dropped the quartered potato into a bin of other discarded pieces.

While the results were dull for McCord, who is studying heat necrosis, it was good news for local growers, who can be confident that what they're sending out on trucks is clean inside, Clough said in an e-mail.

About 5,000 acres of potatoes are grown in Pasquotank and Camden counties, and the gross value of the crop each year is about $6.5 million to $8 million, he said. The two counties are usually first and second in the state for potato production.

"I've heard a lot of growers say they were blessed, especially that they weren't flooded like in the Midwest," Campbell said. "Dry weather can ruin a crop, but wet weather will kill you."

Lauren King, (252) 338-2413, lauren.king@pilotonline.com