Canada: Good potato yields despite challenging year for Manitoba growers

Many Manitoba potato growers faced nail-biting times this autumn as they struggled to get the crop off. In the end, however, yields are expected to be similar to last year. Dave Sawatzky, manager of Keystone Potato Producers Association, said he predicts yields will roughly be on par or slightly better than 2016’s harvest, when Manitoba potato growers brought in 348 hundredweight per acre on average. “Overall, it looks like a pretty good crop. A very challenging crop, this year, to grow — very dry summers, so irrigation was run hard,” he said. In recent years, potato yields have generally been increasing, a trend Sawatzky attributes to several factors. More