On Oct. 6, Ken Gad, owner of Cambridge Farms in South Easton, MA, told The Produce News that this year’s potato harvest has gone very well, and that weather was good during the growing season.

“We have ideal harvesting conditions,” said Gad. “Product is going into storage in very good order. We expect to be better than 90 percent through the Maine harvest by the end of this week, which is on schedule.”

The beauty of the Maine agricultural landscape is evident as a truck heads home at sunset and in the flowering potato fields early in the growing season.He added that the company is looking forward to having a nice quality crop to deal with, in all colors and in all potato varieties.

“We are seeing nice volume yields,” noted Gad. “The crop is going into storage well and we look to have a good crop in both quality and in volume to market this year.”

Prices, however, are not looking strong, but based on the yields and volume, he is hopeful of seeing some positive results.

“It appears that most of the country has had average to above average yields,” said Gad. “Nationally, pricing will be pretty much suppressed during the season. Competition will be fierce for each region, so we are going to have to be consciously aggressive on behalf of our farmers as well as our customers and marketing partners.”

He also noted that transportation will likely continue to be a challenge, but it’s not one that can’t be overcome or handled properly for Cambridge Farms’ customers.

In his opinion, Gad stressed that the potato section in produce departments are beginning to look like the lettuce shelf.

“Today there are too many options in the category,” he said. “While it is great to have variety and choices, in an effort to gain more shelf space the potato industry has created too many different package sizes, potato sizes, specialty packs and variety options.”

He’s not adverse to progress, but he pointed out as an example that the 10-foot shelf space allotted to potatoes 15 years ago likely had about six items on it today.

“Today that same amount of space has something around 15 items shoved into it — from bulk to value-added options and in every size, shape and type of potato,” he said. “It’s not that progress and opportunities in the produce industry are bad, but we’re taking the pie that used to be cut into eight slices and we’re now cutting that same pie into 24 slices.”

The result, he stressed, is that instead of every region getting a healthy share of the market in order to properly and orderly market what they grow, everyone is getting a sliver.

“This makes it harder and harder to move what is grown,” he added.

Cambridge continues to add to its audited facilities with new growing partners coming on line every year.

“We continue to strive to bring better quality to our customers and to our marketing partners,” said Gad.