Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission touts research program at LSU

The Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission, coming off its 70th year of promoting the growers and produce professionals who provide people with delicious and nutritious sweet potatoes in the state, is looking forward to 2023. 

In fact, leaders of the commission spent late January at the 61st National Convention of the U.S. Sweet Potato Council in Wilmington, NC, meeting with other experts about the best ways to help Louisiana growers and improve things for the entire industry.

“The big thing I’m hearing — not just for Louisiana but the industry as a whole — is there seems to be a fair amount of sweet potatoes in the market,” said René Simon, director of the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission. “There’s a really good supply and we’ll probably have a crop carryover from ‘22 into the ‘23 season, which we also had the previous year.” 

Prices for sweet potatoes are therefore not as good as those in the industry hoped, due to the excess supply. 

“Specifically, for Louisiana, our crop was really off this past year; it was damaged by a lot of rain during the harvest season,” Simon said. “It was one of our poorest crops in the 15 years I have been doing this. We had a good crop going into harvest, but it started raining right when harvest began, and it was saturated for about six weeks.”

He expects to once again have a smaller production in Louisiana sweet potatoes for 2023, projecting about a 200-acre reduction, which follows a similar drop last year. 

“Coming off of 2022, our marketing efforts will really concentrate on the quality of the Louisiana product,” Simon said. “It’s hard to spend a lot on marketing coming off of crops where supplies are limited. We don’t want to generate a false sense that supplies are overabundant in Louisiana. We want to make sure our growers can fill their contracts and ensure they remain profitable.”

A big part of the commission’s legacy over seven decades has been its notable accomplishments in research, as 45 percent of all funds the commission amasses goes to the LSU AgCenter — an agriculture research center that is associated with the Louisiana State University System.

“The research that LSU does is used across the country and even across the world, so it’s very important to the sweet potato industry,” Simon said. “The variety development program at LSU has developed some really great varieties that grow so well.”

The original founders of Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission understood from the beginning the importance of promoting and advertising sweet potatoes, and it has helped the product become a must-have for millions of consumers. 

“We want to maintain our market share and make sure that people know that Louisiana still produces the highest-quality sweet potato out there and we will continue to have a quality product,” Simon said. “Our growers have been doing this a long time.”  

This year, the commission continues to work to find solutions for ongoing issues of labor and supply chain issues that growers are experiencing. 

“That puts some downward pressure on the price,” Simon said. “So that’s been a concern not just for Louisiana farmers, but for farmers across the country. The commission advocates for our growers on a state and national level and look to help our growers with these issues.”