March 28, 2024
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State digs up money to aid potato disposal

PRESQUE ISLE – In the wee hours of Friday, the final day of the session, legislators found money in the General Fund to help Maine potato growers dispose of their overabundance in an environmentally safe way.

After months of scrounging for money in the state’s strapped financial coffers, $750,000 was earmarked for potato growers. That money is in addition to the $1.1 million in federal funds earmarked for the same disposal program.

It has been a very bad year for potato growers across the country, and Maine growers of table stock potatoes are among the hardest hit, according to industry sources in northern Maine.

Potato growers, especially in Maine where they faced both an oversupply of potatoes and a shortage of storage, are left with large amounts of leftover potatoes, and the new planting season is only weeks away.

“This money is to help potato growers who got rid of potatoes in an environmentally sound manner,” Martin said Tuesday afternoon. “These potatoes must be disposed of so as not to cause late blight problems in the upcoming crop.

“We finally found the money, at about 5:30 a.m. Friday,” Martin said. “The money will be paid to growers who dispose of potatoes through June.”

The $750,000 will pay growers $1.50 per hundredweight of potatoes that were trashed. That is expected to pay for the proper disposal of 500,000 hundredweight of potatoes.

According to Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, if the amount of potatoes disposed of is more than 500,000 hundredweight, the money will be prorated so that all growers get something. Growers will be paid by the state in July.

Martin said Sen. Richard Kneeland, R-Easton, was instrumental in helping secure the funding.

“He was able to talk to the Republican caucus and make them see the emergency of the situation,” Martin said. “His actions were very helpful in making this an emergency program.”

Martin said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service would assist in the disposal verification process.

“This money is for people who disposed of potatoes before or after NRCS program disposal in March,” Flannery said Tuesday afternoon. “The documented disposal of potatoes was done using best management practices.”

The federal and state programs will have infused more than $1.8 million into the struggling table stock potato market this selling season.

Both programs, according to Flannery, are an effort to help ensure there are no disease problems in the 2004 crop.

Another federal effort is also under way to get the USDA to buy potatoes from the country’s excess supply and use it in school lunch and other federal nutrition programs.

Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Rep. Michael Michaud have joined a bipartisan group of both houses of Congress in asking for a so-called “bonus buy” of excess potatoes in Maine and across the country.

The USDA annually buys potato products for school and other programs, but the request is for more purchases than usual.

This season, according to North American Potato Market News, an industry newsletter published in Idaho, exports of fresh U.S. potatoes have dropped by 20 percent over last year.

In Maine, shipments of fresh potatoes are down nearly 26 percent from last year, when growers shipped 109,000 hundredweight of potatoes as of April 17. This year only 81,000 hundredweight have been shipped.

Flannery said he suspects that Maine’s acreage will drop this growing season by 3,000 acres to 63,000. The industry also is expected to lose a few growers this year.


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