Washington potato production down; pea and lentils crops up

Washington Ag Today November 11, 2009 U.S. fall potato production is up three percent this year from 2008 but the USDA says the potato crop in Washington is smaller. Dennis Koong of the Washington Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service has the details.

Koong: “We are looking at potato production down about 5% from last year and this totals 88.45 million hundredweight. So this is down five percent but yields are up from last year from 600 hundredweight per acre last year to 610 hundredweight per acre this year. So the production decline is primarily driven by the acreage decrease. Area harvested is expected to be down 10-thousand acres from last year.”

The national average yield is forecast at 426 hundredweight an acre, which if realized will be a record. Idaho’s yield of 411 hundredweight would also be a record.

The Statistics Service says Washington farmers produced 1.79 million hundredweight of dry peas this year. That is up 49 percent from last year on more planted acres and higher yields. Nationally dry pea production was up 42 percent.

Increased acreage and higher yields also made for a Washington lentil crop 62 percent larger than in 2008 at 980-thousand hundredweight. U.S. lentil production increased 144%.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.