April 2020 - 31

A fair chance at cooperative collaboration
If you're as old
as I am (60-ish),
you notice when
things change.
For the last 15
UNITED POTATO
GROWERS OF
AMERICA
Dick Okray
Immediate Past
Chairman
years, potato prices
have been much
more stable than
in the years prior.
Gone are the days
of boom-and-bust
marketing cycles.
Good riddance.
Overproduction has
never benefited growers.
As an industry, we know how far we've
come. We've watched fresh potato retailers
aggregate at a much faster pace than we
producers have, and their delivery model
continues to change annually.
In 2000, there were just shy of 6,000
potato growers in the U.S. Today there are
about 2,500, still enough to consider our
industry young. Laws that were passed in
the 1920s make it possible for growers to
collaborate and cooperate. Knowing this, it
seems that a pertinent question to ask is:
Should we consider our individual operations
independent or inter-dependent?
I propose the latter to be true.
Why does cooperating and collaborating
seem so at odds to farmers? I suppose that
each of us believes that we are unique. This
has served us well over the years, constantly
tweaking and evolving our farms to produce
food at lower cost, higher quality and
supposed differentiation. But have our gains
come organically, with no assistance?
As a group, farmers are generally happy to
share their inspirations, proud as they are of
them. Catch us at the coffee shop and we will
share just about every bit of data, knowledge
and working theory about our craft. And who
among us doesn't go to continuing education
meetings all winter long?
But knowing our markets should be the
single biggest planning tool we use. With so
many growers, the danger of overproduction
is always present. We shouldn't rely on bad
weather elsewhere as part of a viable business
plan. Evidence leads us to believe we are more
interdependent than independent - United
Potato Growers of America embodies and
supports this end, both in the U.S. and Canada.
Checking the Farmer's Almanac, clumping
the soil in our hands or divining the direction
of the wind were fine tools back in the day. In
today's environment of hyper data and supercomputing,
no one would dare go to the field
without a plan that uses precision farming,
GPS satellite hookup, moisture sensors and
petiole sampling, just to name a few. Without
them, profit margins would suffer.
So, why not use the meta-data that's been
collected and massaged by United Potato
Growers of America and Canada over the last
15 years to determine the actual number of
potatoes that can be marketed profitably?
All of that data is available from your local
co-op, and at pennies per hundred weight.
It's the only growers' organization I've ever
heard of dedicated to getting a fair return for
its members.
Most importantly, it works!
It's a safe bet that our industry will continue
to consolidate. The laws that we have today will
someday no longer be available to us but in the
time that we have we should use these tools to
the best advantage that we can. Growers may
have had issues with United in the past, but it
deserves a second look; we deserve " fair " !
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31

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April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2020