You're asking - a square peg in a round hole, I guess, is the best analogy I can come up with. Zak: You can't take some of these facilities that are built directly for food service and then tomorrow flip a switch and make them able to sell into retail. In Peggy's case, her customers in Washington were cut back more than 50%, and she and Bill were stuck with tons of seed they'd normally sell. And more than half of the industry's potatoes were stranded on seed farms. Out of options, the growers cut their orders with seed farmers. Narrator: So when food-service establishments shut down because of COVID-19, it was a chain effect. Zak: Think of everything from white-table restaurants clear down to your fast, quick service. Narrator: Potatoes for food service, like restaurants, hotels, and catering, make up an estimated 55% of all potato crops. Zak: When COVID hit, we had a huge run on retail, which lasted for about a week to two weeks, but then when we shut off all the restaurants, that's when everything came out of kilter. Once the potatoes are out of the ground, they go into storage or are sent to a factory, where they're cleaned and turned into either fresh or processed potatoes. Potato growers get the seed from Buyan and start planting in March, then they harvest in early fall. Just, some fry better, they have a better color to them. If you're a process grower, you'll grow a different product line. Zak: If you're a fresh-product grower, you'll plant a different variety, or a different genetic line of potatoes. Narrator: That's the bag of potato chips, the french fries at McDonald's, or the precut fries in the frozen section. You don't actually see the potato you see the byproduct or the end result of that. Zak: The other side of that is - we call it our process segment. Narrator: That's foods like a raw potato at a grocery store or au gratin potatoes at your favorite restaurant. Zak: You're actually seeing the potato in its true form. Each potato variety goes to a specific grower in either the fresh or processed segment. Narrator: Buyan grows three different disease-free seed strains: Umatilla, Clearwater, and Russet Burbank potatoes. That's a fairly rigorous process that avoids disease, imperfections. Zak: Virtually all the potatoes grown started out from a certified seed. It starts with a seed grower like Buyan, where farmers grow a variety of seed strains. Normally, potato production across the Northwest looks like this. We visited Buyan Ranch, where Peggy and Bill have been growing potato seed for 59 years. Narrator: Now farmers across Idaho and Montana are stuck with mountains of potatoes. Zak Miller: More than half of our market shut down by government mandate. It's the supply chain from the growers to the supermarket that got interrupted. Narrator: And the same thing is happening across the Northwest.īill: I mean, it was just unprecedented. Instead, they're throwing away 700 tons.īill Buyan: The potatoes have been awful good to us for a lot of years, but this year it just really turned sour. Normally this time of year, Bill and Peggy would be sending their potatoes to be planted. We're in the small town of Sheridan, Montana, on a potato farm. Narrator: These potatoes aren't gonna end up on your dinner table. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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