There is a small town in Sheridan called Montana. During the pandemic they were contributing billion tons of potatoes to this planet instead of throwing 700 plenty tons of them.
The same incidents are happening on across the universe, they are brought to light by these subsequent articles:
Nothing but uncertainty:local potato farmers hit hard by virus fallout.
Coronavirus lockdowns throw the agricultural supply chain into Array.
An Idaho farm is giving away 2 million potatoes because coronavirus has hurt the demand.
Now the farmers of Montana are stuck with millions of potatoes.
How and why did all these happen?
Buyan Ranch, an association, has been growing potatoes for fifty nine years. Normally potato production across the North West is Very huge. Here in Buyan, the farmers usually grow a variety of seed strains. Buyan grows three different diseased free seed strains.
Now coming to the farm, potato growers get the seeds from Buyan and start to plant them on fields and harvest in nearby farms. Once the potatoes are out of the ground, they go into storage where all are sent to a factory cleaned, either turned into fresh or processed potatoes.
When COVID hit them, they had a huge loss which lasted for about two weeks where they shed down all the restaurants, that’s when everything started declining.
Potatoes are a major ingredient in restaurants, hotels and catering. When the food centres were closed due to COVID-19, it was a chain of act where processors cut their orders with growers, eventually out of option they too cut their orders with farmers. Those potatoes cannot be sold to groceries or retail vendors.
Before the pandemic, they had the hope where farmers were looking for a 15-year raise in potato’s prices. Now they are facing a 20-year fall. Buyan is facing about $140,000 losses. Farmers over Montana are going through $8 million which is a major loss.
To save some of the potatoes going to waste, Buyan has given about 75,000 pounds of potatoes to the surrounding communities. Farmers are also mashing the potatoes into a mixture to feed cattles.
All on estimation of about 1.5 billion pounds potatoes are trapped in the supply chain across the US.
Farmers are Hoping for the best in the upcoming years!
