Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – Officials with the Maine Potato Board aren’t sure to what extent the recent higher-than-normal rainfall will affect area spuds. “Obviously excess water can have a negative effect on the potato crop,” said Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board. “What effect that’s going to be is pretty hard to say. It’s not a broad brush; some areas of the county and state have gotten more rain than others, so those areas that got more rain would potentially have more of a negative effect.
“We’re not talking about a 100 percent crop loss here,” he said. “We’re talking about conditions that we’ve seen in the past as far as rain goes, and we won’t know the impact for a while. We’re going to be impacted at some level, but what that level will be we don’t know today because the whole thing hasn’t played out. What impact the rain is going to have on quality or on yield is hard to say.”
Flannery said the fields have been so wet lately that growers are having a hard time spraying protectants, which are prompting such diseases as late blight.
“There’s late blight in Maine and New Brunswick, but it’s not in every potato field in Aroostook County or in Maine,” he said, “and growers are prepared to do what they need to do; we need the weather to cooperate to get it done.”
According to the National Weather Service in Caribou, as of July 31, 44.59 inches of rain had fallen in the region.
“We’re concerned, as anybody would be, with late blight inoculum around in the area,” said Flannery, “and we – as an industry as a whole – are doing everything we can do to address those issues.”
Flannery said some areas of the St. John Valley have received more than nine inches of rain.
“That’s a lot of water,” he said, “but we’ve had areas in central Aroostook that have had rain, but not to the level they’ve had in the Valley.”
Growers are getting ready, Flannery said, to “dig around” to see what their fields look like after the heavy rain.
“They’ll check around and make sure they stay out of the areas that could have some water rot,” he said, “so they’re already thinking about what they need to do to get this crop in and taken care of. As always, they will do the best job they can do.”
Steady rain has not only dampened the potato crop, but other types of agriculture, as well.
“I’ve talked to some of the small fruits and vegetable guys and there’s water laying in their fields,” said Flannery, “and there are guys in the dairy industry in central Maine who don’t have their first crop of hay in because it just hasn’t been haymaking weather. The same with corn producers because they haven’t had any heat degree-days to ripen the corn.
“It’s not just the potato industry that’s seeing the effects of a wet summer,” he said. “If we get three or four more days of hot, sunny weather, it could change the complexion a lot. We’ll have to wait and see.”