Potato growers in Atlantic Canada are worried about their supply, as COVID-19 and extreme weather conditions are causing complications. Among the problems is the fact that restaurants are shut down due to COVID-19, which caused a devastating ripple effect for potato farms, and a dramatic downturn in demand.
Now with restrictions loosened and more businesses reopened, the industry is in a much different position.
“I would say today for french fries, a lot of factories are running somewhere about 80 per cent of where they were a year ago. So demand has increased to that level at this speed,” explains Kevin MacIssac, general manager of United Potato Growers of Canada.
MacIsaac says that growers had been advised in the spring to cut back their acreage, but demand bounced back more quickly than expected. Potato farmers in Atlantic Canada have been thrown another curveball in the form of drought-like weather conditions this season, posing problems for growing.
“The net result is depending on the weather conditions we have today with this heat and dryness,” MacIsaac told atlantic.ctvnews.ca. “We may be very tight for supply in terms of our potato crop this fall.”