How Potatoes Move Through the Global Food Supply Chain
Whether you’re picking up a bag of potatoes at a local grocery store, eating fries at a fast-food chain, or enjoying a side of roast potatoes at your favorite restaurant, people all over the world love the taste of fresh potatoes. But what does it take to bring potatoes to your table? It’s a lot more complicated than you might think.
Potatoes are a staple of the global food supply chain and are one of the most widely grown crops in America: Over 900 thousand acres were planted and harvested in the US in 2024 alone. To ensure that consumers around the world have access to potatoes year-round, months of work go into their production and distribution.
Most consumers only think about the potato’s journey from the grocery store to their kitchens. But these humble vegetables have a much more complex and interesting journey to go through before they can be enjoyed by customers around the world.
Cultivation: Where It All Starts
All potatoes begin their journey in a field. While potatoes can be grown in many climates, they grow best in cool, temperate locations with fertile soil and a reliable water supply. Washington State is a great example, and it produces 23 percent of all US-grown potatoes.
First, farmers must prepare their fields by tilling the soil for proper aeration and determine how fertile the soil is. Fertilizer is added to ensure that the plants have enough nutrients to grow.
To help ensure potatoes receive the nutrients they need, farmers practice crop rotation, or growing different crops in a field each season. Diversifying crops helps naturally lower the risk of potato plants developing diseases or attracting pests. It also improves the quality of the soil and its moisture retention.
This is important because once potatoes are planted, they rely on water to grow. Farmers need to strike the right balance between keeping their plants healthy and using valuable water resources responsibly.
Many farmers are committed to improving their growing practices and have turned to using advanced irrigation techniques, like drip and pivot systems, which deliver water directly to the potato plants’ roots and help minimize the amount of water wasted. Soil moisture sensors and weather forecasting tools help farmers make data-based decisions about when to water crops as well.
These changes not only reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, but they also help preserve valuable natural resources.
Harvesting and Processing
After 70 to 140 days of growing, depending on the potato variety, it’s time to harvest the potatoes with specialized machines. It’s a complex task. The machine must be gentle enough to avoid damaging the produce and able to separate the potato from dirt, rocks, and other plant material. Any damage will shorten the life of the potato or cause it to spoil before it can be processed or eaten.
Once the potatoes are out of the ground, they are sorted based on size, shape, and quality. Then, there are several options for what will happen to them next. Most will be sent straight to processing. They’ll get cleaned, peeled, and turned into packaged products like fries, chips, and frozen meals.
Other potatoes are put into storage. One reason these vegetables are so popular is because they can be stored for so long. When kept in special temperature-controlled storage warehouses, potatoes can stay fresh for up to 11 months without sprouting or decaying.
Transportation: Moving Potatoes Around the World
Once potatoes are processed or packaged, they are transported to customers around the country and the world using a variety of transportation methods.
Most short-distance journeys use trucks. Their speed and flexibility make trucks a perfect choice to deliver potatoes from storage warehouses or processing plants to local markets and grocers.
If the potatoes need to be shipped across the country, rail transport is a cost-efficient option. Trains can transport huge amounts of food products from coast to coast in just a few days, keeping everything fresh in insulated train cars.
Potatoes bound for overseas destinations typically travel on cargo ships. Less commonly, they may also be shipped on air freight, although this is a much more expensive option.
No matter how potatoes are transported, it’s important to maintain proper temperature, humidity, and ventilation levels during the entire process. Refrigerated transportation keeps both fresh and processed potatoes from spoiling, ensuring that they reach their destination in perfect condition.
Distribution: Getting Potatoes to Consumers
After months of work by many people, the potatoes finally reach retailers like grocers, restaurants, and wholesalers, ready for consumers to purchase.
Reaching global customers offers growers more business than ever before. In 2023, the US made a profit of 23.6 million dollars just from exporting potatoes and processed products like French fries, with Japan, Canada, and Mexico being the top buyers.
However, the global food supply chain also comes with unique challenges. Other countries have different quality control standards that growers and processors must comply with.
Distribution logistics can also be complex, and disruptions to the global food supply chain can have disastrous results, with the effects being felt sharply by consumers, distributors, and growers alike.
In January of 2022, fast food restaurants in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and Kenya were forced to ration or halt the sales of fries. Although there was no shortage of potatoes themselves, a combination of issues with freight logistics, lack of workforce, and rising energy costs all affected the supply chain. A multitude of delays caused whole shipments of food to end up spoiling before it could be delivered and consumed.
Potatoes Are a Global Business
From a seed at a farm to a plate at your table, potatoes undergo a complex journey that takes months to complete. Every step, from growers to distributors, plays a crucial role in getting high-quality potatoes to customers.
As the world becomes even more interconnected, it’s more important than ever for farmers, transportation workers, and retailers to work together to ensure that this staple food item remains available for consumers.
Moving into the future, the industry has to balance efficient production with sustainable growing and distribution practices in order to reduce the impact on the environment and ensure that potatoes remain affordable and nutritious for consumers for years to come.
