“We have some extremely strong relationships,” said Ken Gad, Cambridge Farms president and CEO. “We’ve been a pretty strong marketer from that region for over 40 years.”
The Eastern Shore season typically starts in mid-June, with supplies from Delaware tapering off at the end of August.
“One of the strengths that Cambridge Farms has had over the years is being able to offer our marketing partners seamless production on all varieties,” he said, including russets from the Midwest and Idaho (and a niche program from Mid-Atlantic states), and a 12-month supply of reds, yellows and whites from the East Coast.
The Eastern Shore has seen a production drop in white potatoes in recent years, mostly supplanted by yellow potato plantings.
“Over the past five or six years, the trend has been more yellows, more yellows,” Gad said. “They seem to be the darling of the club stores. Years ago, the East Coast was very involved in white potatoes.”
The Eastern Shore provides a niche market for red, yellow and white potatoes each summer. While Cambridge Farms hasn’t encountered labor issues this season, Gad noted that domestic crews and labor managers that typically follow the Florida crop up the Eastern seaboard are growing older, and “aging out” and the attrition of expertise is being noticed by growers and distributors.
“Some of my farmers have been using the same crew bosses, the same migrant crews for as long I’ve been around, which is 40-plus years,” Gad said. “So now some of those crew bosses are retiring, and the next generation of their families are not interested in that lifestyle or that type of work”
In niche markets, such as the non-russet potato market in the east during summer months, demand for a red, yellow or white potato can change in a heartbeat.
“If we’ve been moving heavily on yellows, and they’re not available all of the sudden, will that cause the demand on the reds to pick up?” Gad said. “Going back to what’s available, we know that yellows currently seem to be the most plentiful, but there’s also the most demand for that color right now, so they’ve been able to hold a better return.”
A stable market benefits growers, packers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and consumers.
“I’m finishing my 42nd year in this industry, and something I learned from day one is that we need to create a win-win-win scenario,” Gad said. “You can’t have the buyer winning all the time. You can’t have the supplier winning all the time, and you can’t have the end user winning all the time.”
