March 6, 2015
CapitalPress.com
19
Idaho spud packers emphasize organic
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho
— Idaho fresh potato packers
expect 2015 will be a big year
for the growing organic spud
category.
Officials with locally based
Potandon Produce announced
Feb. 24 their first produce line
marketed under the Potandon
Produce brand will feature
3-pound bags of organic russet,
red and yellow potatoes.
Wada Farms, which has fa-
cilities in Idaho Falls and Pin-
gree, has been sourcing organic
spuds from other growing areas
for several years but plans to
start producing its own Ida-
ho-grown organic potatoes this
season.
Idaho Falls-based Eagle Eye
Photo submitted
Potandon Produce, based
in Idaho Falls, Idaho, has
launched a new line of organic
potatoes, to be marketed under
the new Potandon Produce
label.
Produce anticipates having its
largest organic crop this season.
Ralph Schwartz, Potandon’s
vice president of marketing,
sales and innovation, said the
organic sector has enjoyed dou-
ble-digit growth for the past de-
cade with “no real end in sight”
and the new brand should help
customers capitalize on the
trend. The organic spuds will be
sourced initially from growers
in areas such as Washington,
Colorado, Wisconsin and Can-
ada, but not Idaho.
Schwartz said Potandon has
packed organic spuds for cus-
tomers’ private labels and had a
Green Giant organic potato line
years ago.
On the morning of Potan-
don’s announcement, Schwartz
said three customers immedi-
ately committed to carry the
product and “several others are
waiting for details.”
Chris Wada, marketing di-
rector for Wada Farms, said his
company intends to sell organ-
ic spuds in eco-friendly bags
made of potato starch, called
Tater Made.
“It will be a continuing
trend and focus for us to grow
our organic product offerings,”
Wada said.
Eagle Eye Produce in Idaho
Falls started packing organic
russets six years ago and has
gradually grown its organic
business every year, said Lance
Poole, the company’s vice
president of sales. Poole said
his company has a dedicated
facility to handle organic spuds,
and production costs are com-
ing down as companies have
developed better organic fer-
tilizers and other inputs.
When Eagle Eye started
in organic potatoes, Poole
said, they could only store
them for three months. With
improved storage methods
and technology, he said, Ea-
gle Eye now stores organic
spuds into June.
Poole said organic pota-
toes remain a niche market but
“we’re seeing a lot of growth
in the program.”
Eagle Eye has also sourced
organic russets for Amy’s
Kitchen, a producer of organ-
ic frozen meals opening a new
plant in Pocatello, to test as
an alternative for the chipping
varieties it now uses in its rec-
ipes.
Buhl organic farmer Mike
Heath said current prices for
organic processing spuds are
$12-$13 per hundredweight.
That compares with the cur-
rent conventional fresh mar-
ket grower return of $5-$6 per
hundredweight.
“I think it’s great we’re get-
ting more people interested in
organic right now,” Heath said.
“The demand is outstripping
supply for sure.”
According to United Fresh
Produce Association, organic
vegetable sales accounted for
10.2 percent of total vegetable
sales during the third quarter
of 2014, and organic sales vol-
ume was up 15 percent from
the prior year.
“These are now big farms
getting involved in the or-
ganic movement,” said Idaho
Potato Commission President
and CEO Frank Muir. “We
think it’s an important part of
a full portfolio of potato of-
ferings.”
Seed growers exceed ring rot program requirements
Columbia-Snake
irrigators push plea
for water to the top
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Private group wants
to connect to East
Low Canal
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Rebuffed by regional offi-
cials, a private irrigation associ-
ation that wants to tap the Co-
lumbia River to irrigate 14,500
acres in Central Washington
has asked the head of the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation to inter-
vene.
The Columbia-Snake River
Irrigators Association has been
unable to win official support
for its proposal to connect to the
East Low Canal to serve land
north of Interstate 90 and east of
Moses Lake.
The association’s board rep-
resentative, Darryll Olsen, said
the group will go to court if the
bureau’s commissioner, Estevan
Lopez, doesn’t get involved.
“They’ll end up in litiga-
tion,” Olsen said. “It’s not going
to be very long. It’s going to be
sooner (rather) than later.”
The association says that
while the public sector contin-
ues to make plans, it has a shov-
el-ready project to take pressure
off the depleting Odessa Subar-
ea aquifer.
Olsen said he’s offering pri-
vate-sector efficiency and pri-
vate-sector financing — $42
million from 14 landowners.
The reclamation bureau,
Washington Department of
Ecology and East Columbia Ba-
sin Irrigation District reject the
proposal.
The bureau, DOE and irri-
gation district are collaborating
to replace Odessa groundwater
with river water on some 87,000
acres in Adams, Grant, Franklin
and Lincoln counties. The bu-
reau finalized the plan in 2013.
The bureau’s Columbia-Cas-
cades area manager, Dawn
Wiedmeier, said Monday that
Olsen’s proposal doesn’t fit with
that plan, which took eight years
to develop.
Besides smaller in scope, Ol-
sen’s proposal includes land not
eligible to receive water under
the government plan, she said.
“We’re having a fundamentally
different project.”
In a paid advertisement in
the Feb. 27 Capital Press, the
irrigators association printed a
memo it sent a week earlier to
Lopez.
The memo described a
long-awaited meeting with the
regional director, Lori Lee, in
January that left the associa-
tion hopeful its proposal would
be seriously considered. Since
then, however, the association
complained it has met with “re-
newed obfuscation.”
“This deteriorating circum-
stance begs for USBR interven-
tion from the highest level,” the
memo concludes.
In an interview, Olsen said
the association hasn’t heard yet
from Lopez. If Lopez learns de-
tails about the association’s pro-
posal, particularly the part about
private money on the table, he
should celebrate, Olsen said.
“We’ve got private capital to
move forward now,” Olsen said.
“He ought to be standing up on
his desk cheering.”
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho —
Many Idaho commercial and
seed potato growers weren’t
content to simply meet the min-
imum requirements of a newly
mandated test for bacterial ring
rot.
Under the Idaho Crop Im-
provement Association’s new
ring rot program, certified seed
beginning with generation one
must undergo advanced labora-
tory testing at a 200-tuber sam-
ple size for lots smaller than a
tenth of an acre and 400 tubers
for all other lots.
However, Alan Westra,
southeast area manager with
Idaho Crop Improvement, has
received seed lot samples as
large as 6,000 tubers from seed
growers seeking extra assur-
ance for themselves or their
customers.
Seed growers who submit
larger than required sample
sizes are charged $50 for every
200 additional spuds. Many
seed growers also pursue more
stringent testing from outside
laboratories.
The requirement is in re-
sponse to an Idaho ring rot
flare-up that started in 2012.
Westra said 95 percent of Idaho
seed lots have been tested this
winter, encompassing well over
half a million spuds, and none
have been positive for ring rot.
“Over the course of time, I
expect we’ll demonstrate pro-
gram cleanliness,” Westra said.
Rupert seed grower Randy
Bauscher tested his seed at a
4,400-tuber sample size, a level
major processors have strong-
ly encouraged their growers to
consider.
Bauscher believes a larger
sample size also makes “good
Photo submitted
Potatoes show symptoms of bacterial ring rot. Many Idaho seed growers are going well beyond the
testing requirements of a new program mandating testing of seed lots at a 400-tuber sample size.
business sense.”
“The testing is cheap versus
having a problem,” Bauscher
said. “I know some growers are
suing other seed growers. There
are a lot of issues over this.”
Mountain Home processed
grower Jeff Harper requested
seed testing at a 4,400-tuber
sample size, reasoning gam-
bling with ring rot is a “good
way to lose millions of dollars.”
Aberdeen farmer Ritchey
Toevs sent Idaho Crop Im-
provement the minimum sam-
ple size for seed he raised but
had a private Indiana labora-
tory conduct additional testing
with 4,400 tubers. He said the
private lab charged $20 for ev-
ery 200 tubers tested. Seed that
Toevs purchased to raise com-
mercially was also tested at a
higher rate.
Pear growers get early
contract from canners
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — Pacific
Northwest pear growers have
received their best new con-
tract from canned pear proces-
sors in recent memory, and far
earlier than usual.
Growers will be paid $320
per ton for No. 1 Bartlett in
2015, $340 in 2016 and $360
in 2017, up from $300 they
received in 2014, Jay Gran-
dy, manager of the Washing-
ton-Oregon Canning Pear
Association, announced at the
group’s annual luncheon in Ya-
kima, Feb. 26.
Prices slowly increased in
the past 10 years after a $280
high in 1996 following a pear
shortage from a freeze and a
$177 low in 1999. The most
recent three-year contract had
a $6-per-ton increase each year.
The $20-per-ton increase in
each year of the new contract
shows processors trying to keep
up with fresh-market prices to
keep the volume they need,
Grandy said.
The region’s two largest
canners — Del Monte Foods
of San Francisco, which has
a plant in Yakima, and The
Neil Jones Food Co. (North-
west Packing) in Vancouver,
Wash. — have agreed to sign
the contract, Grandy said. The
third, Seneca Foods, Marion,
N.Y., with a plant in Sunnyside,
Wash., has said it will not sign,
Grandy said.
The association will not ne-
gotiate a separate contract with
Seneca, he said. Growers may
still sell to Seneca but are not as-
sured the contract price, he said.
Seneca officials did not re-
spond to a request for comment.
Most canned pears are No. 1
grade Bartlett from Yakima. The
new contract provides 5 percent
more for No. 1A
and 38 percent
less for No. 2
grade, Grandy
said.
Every three
years, at this time
of year, the as-
Grandy
sociation begins
to negotiate a
new contract for growers with
canners. Typically, a contract is
signed just before fall harvest.
This time, an association com-
mittee starting working last fall
and it resulted in an early con-
tract.
David Garcia, association
board chairman and manager of
Diamond Fruit Growers, Hood
River, Ore., said growers really
appreciate that processors set-
tled early.
Mike First, Del Monte man-
ager in Yakima, praised Gran-
dy for his professionalism and
“very, very good job.”
Asked later, Grandy said the
good prices and early settlement
had nothing to do with the fact
this is his last contract negotia-
tions before his retirement later
this year.
“Del Monte isn’t doing
anything that’s not in its best
interest,” he said. “It’s a great
trade-off in the best interest of
growers and processors in the
long term.”
The contract, in the third
year, comes close to what grow-
ers can get for pears on the fresh
market, he said.
In 1990, 73 percent of Pacific
Northwest Bartlett tonnage was
canned and 27 percent was sold
on the fresh market. In 2014, it
was close to 50-50 with 117,000
tons to canning, 114,000 tons to
fresh and 6,000 tons for juice.
The shift over the past de-
cade has been caused by more
consumers preferring fresh to
canned pears. Canned pear sales
in grocery stores has declined.
Food service outlets buy most
canned pears.
“Fresh product has all the
buzz but canned pears are just
as good,” said Rich Baldoz, na-
tional sales manager of Pacific
Coast Producers, a Lodi, Calif.,
pear canner. He said 40 percent
of PNW canned pears go to
schools, 25 percent to hospitals
and senior living facilities, 20
percent to colleges, daycares
and prisons and 15 percent to
restaurants.
Canned pears sell at about
$30 per case, up from $19 in
2011, compared with $20 per
case for applesauce, he said.
Other canned fruits and import-
ed canned fruit is cheaper so the
PNW canned pear industry has
to maintain its marketing pro-
gram, he said.
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