Lower yield in Northeast
Following great yields last year, Maine potato growers saw another good harvest overall this year on a smaller spread of acres, according to statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Maine potato farmers grew an estimated 14.5 million hundredweight (roughly 1.6 billion pounds) on 46,000 acres in 2016, according to estimates in the USDA’s Northeast crop report.
This year’s total harvest is down 10 percent from last year and the area planted is down 9 percent. Over the last decade, more than 10,000 acres in the state have been taken out of potato production.
The USDA report estimates that Maine potato growers had an average yield of 315 hundredweight per acre, down just 1.5 percent from last year, which saw some of the highest yields in a decade.
This year’s growing season started out with a warm spring and early plantings, a stretch of wet, damp weather in June, and then long stretches of warm, dry days, including through most of the harvest.
Yields in Maine surpassed all of the other fall-producing Northeast states, though are far below the 433 hundredweight per acre national average yield driven by western growers.
According to the USDA, about 40 percent of the acres planted were russet varieties for french fries and processing, about 15 percent were Frito Lay varieties for chips and the rest were more than a dozen varieties for fresh markets, such as superiors and red norlands.
