This column appears in the September 2020 issue of Potato Grower.
Spring of 2020 will be unforgettable: People spent the time locked in their homes hoarding toilet paper and gobbling potatoes. And then, when the pandemic appeared to ease, people began burning down other people’s homes and businesses. Chaos happens for many reasons, the most common being that no entity takes charge of maintaining order. When an entity is in charge, it puts in place a certain behavioral structure that brings order to chaos. About 4,000 years ago, when Moses was having a tough time leading a chaotic tribe across a desert, God reportedly stepped in and helped Moses out; the Almighty sent down 10 structuralized rules for civil behavior. In less than a generation of following this ordered civil structure, tribal chaos settled into social order. Within a remarkably short span, Israel became a mighty nation, summarily destroying any army sent against it. Sadly, Moses’s behavioral code eventually fell by the wayside. With civil chaos once again ruling the day, nation after nation began kicking Israel in the head whenever they felt like it.
This brings to mind potato growers who operate chaotically, without regard to the most vital element in their businesses’ economic structure: supply chain management. Getting kicked in the head by chaotic markets apparently doesn’t bother them. Odd, isn’t it?
North America’s commercial potato producers contribute to one collective potato pile, and no potato producer is independent from it.
Producers of America’s favorite vegetable fall into two groups: The first manages its portion of the supply chain, replacing chaos with economic logic and order, and their farms profit generously and perpetually. The second group either lives beneath the stable market umbrella held over them by the first group, or wanders through the marketplace, smashing it with chaotic supply-chain disorder at every opportunity. Producers in this second group vainly consider themselves independent thinkers, independent businessmen. The idea that someone can be an independent potato producer lands somewhere between a fallacy and joke. Finding one’s business within a supply chain, what does failing to understand and to strengthen that supply chain in the best possible way say about that person’s business acumen?
To say the least, posturing oneself as an independent potato producer is very telling about one’s grasp of the potato business, fresh or process. The fact is that North America’s commercial potato producers—fresh and process, U.S. and Canadian—contribute to one collective potato pile, and no potato producer is independent from it. And here’s the kicker: Growers own this pile. Growers assume the entire financial risk of producing this pile. Nothing makes more business sense than for growers to manage this pile as it feeds into the market along its supply chain. Who else cares about grower survival? Who else cares if a grower has sufficient margin to replace aging equipment or to maintain state-of-the-art storages and production capabilities? Who else cares which university a potato grower’s child can attend, or if that child can afford to attend a university at all? Who else cares if farm life remunerates sufficiently to attract that talented and educated child back to the farm?
With today’s information technology, supply chain metrics are easily dialed in. When potato markets are dialed in, potato production is generous—even fun. Because it can be, it ought to be.