Associated Potato Growers Inc. is one of the largest volume shippers of potatoes in the Red River Valley, with 17 North Dakota and Minnesota farmers bringing the goods for the company, which is headquartered in Grand Forks, ND, with operations also in Grafton and Drayton.

O.C. Schulz & Sons Inc. understands the importance of customer satisfaction. The company has spent the past five decades perfecting its growing, packing and shipping operation of its high-quality potatoes.

NoKota Packers Inc., exclusively packs potatoes, with a typical year washing out over 500,000 cwt, which is approximately 2,500 acres. The company has been packing and shipping potatoes since 1979.

“We have completed numerous updates by adding on storage, updating packing and grading lines and made many other improvements since we began,” said Carissa Olsen, president and CEO of the Buxton, ND-based company.

The Northern Plains Potato Growers Association is celebrating its 75th Anniversary in 2021. To help celebrate, it’s bringing back the Red River Red, a mascot created way back in 1950 to promote Red River Valley Red Potatoes.

It was back in 1946 when a group of concerned potato growers joined together and started the NPPGA, representing the interests of the third-largest potato-growing region in the U.S.

“The weather has been perfect since the heavy rains fell in late June,” Ted Kreis said in mid-September. “I think we’ll have a nice crop.”

Kreis, who is the marketing director of the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association, added that in the Red River Valley, “the crop is coming along very well. We had some losses in late June with heavy rain. We thought we lost 10- to 15-percent of the crop at that time. We have possibly recovered some of that through plant recovery and higher yields.

“So overall, it looks like an average-sized crop,” he said.