You’ll be noticing more and more semi’s crossing Wisconsin highways with fresh produce from the farms. That includes the upcoming fresh “new” potato crop!
Beau Hartline, operations manager with Alsum Farms, Inc., says that although the spring started off a little cool, things have straightened out nicely for growing potatoes. Hartline says he expects to start digging the new crop of spuds sometime around the first of August. Those “new” potatoes will be washed, bagged, and quickly moved to grocery stores across the state/region for quick consumption. Hartline says the harvest won’t stop after that until probably close to the end of October, dependent on weather.
Wisconsin growers produce a wide selection of potato varieties — Russet, White, Red, Yellow, Fingerling, and Blue and Purple potato varieties. There’s also a state-of-the-art seed potato farm in Rhinelander, that employs the potato industry’s top researchers who test and develop tomorrow’s potato varieties.
In 2019, Wisconsin potato growers harvested approximately 63,000 acres. The average yield on acres harvested in Wisconsin is estimated to be 410 cwt. (hundredweight)/acre, an increase of 10 cwt./acre compared to 2018.
That puts Wisconsin’s potato production at 25,830,000, an increase of 2,830,000 cwt., or 12.3 percent compared to 2018 (which was an extremely low production year with over 5,000 acres of unharvested potatoes due to heavy frost losses).
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