Aug 21, 2018US potato exports continue to grow
The value of total U.S. exports of potatoes and potato products increased by 2.37 percent for the July 2017 to June 2018 marketing year compared to the previous marketing year. Those figures are compiled by Trade Stats Northwest.
The $1.8 billion in international sales is the highest ever for the United States, the report said. The biggest gain came in fresh exports up 8.5 percent, with dehy up 6 percent and frozen up 1.8 percent. The only decline was a drop of 4 percent in the value of chip exports.
However, the fresh weight equivalent volume of exports declined by 0.86 percent to 3,246,830 metric tons or 71.6 billion hundredweight. This represents approximately 20 percent of total U.S. potato production for the marketing year. The only products to show export volume increases were dehydrated potatoes up 2 percent and seed potatoes also up 2 percent. Fresh potatoes (made up of both table-stock and chip-stock) had the steepest decline at 7 percent; this coupled with the increased value shows the significant increase in the unit value of fresh potato exports. Frozen export volume was virtually unchanged from the year before down just 0.1 percent.
