U.S. potatoes used for processing in 2015 totaled 280 million hundredweight, down 5 percent from 2014, when the figures reached 293 million hundredweight, according to the USDA’s report on potatoes, released in September 2016.
Potatoes used for chips and shoestrings totaled 58.1 million hundredweight in 2015, down 21 percent from the previous year. Frozen french fries and other frozen products totaled 166 million hundredweight of raw potatoes, up 2 percent from 2014. Potatoes used for dehydrating totaled 47.9 million hundredweight, down 2 percent. Canning use, at 1.21 million hundredweight, is down 9 percent from the previous year. Other products made from potatoes totaled 6.38 million hundredweight, an 8 percent decrease from 2014.
Potato production in 2015 is revised to 441 million hundredweight, up slightly from the estimate in the January Crop Production 2015 Summary but still lower than the 2014 crop. Harvested area, at 1.05 million acres, is up slightly from 2014. The average yield of 418 hundredweight per acre is down 3 hundredweight per acre from the previous year.
The value of all potatoes sold in 2015, at $3.6 billion, decreased 2 percent from the previous year. The average price, at $8.76 per hundredweight, is down $0.12 from 2014. The quantity of potatoes sold from the 2015 crop totaled 410 million hundredweight, down slightly from 2014. Quantity sold account for 93 percent of 2015 production, unchanged from the previous year.
Source: Potato Business