What humane farming has to do with the future of the potato industry

By Lukie Pieterse, editor/publisher Potato News Today

Potatoes are not livestock, but the food system they move through is increasingly shaped by animal welfare, sustainability goals, and changing public expectations.

At first glance, humane farming may seem far removed from the potato business. Potatoes are a crop, not livestock, and potato growers are not in the business of raising animals. But agriculture does not operate in neat, isolated compartments anymore.

Potatoes move through the same food system as meat, dairy, eggs, grains, and vegetables – through the same retailers, restaurant chains, procurement systems, and sustainability frameworks. As a result, the standards by which food companies are judged are increasingly shaped across the whole supply chain, not one commodity at a time.

Why this matters to the potato sector

For potato growers, processors, and exporters, the issue is not whether potatoes are part of animal agriculture. They are not. The issue is that many of the world’s major potato buyers and foodservice companies now speak about agriculture in much broader terms than they once did.

McDonald’s says responsible sourcing includes standards related to animal welfare and the environment. PepsiCo says agriculture is core to its business and notes that it sources crops such as potatoes from more than 60 countries. McCain says its sourcing is intended to respect the environment, human rights, and animal welfare.

That does not mean potato growers are suddenly expected to take positions on every debate around livestock production. It does mean the potato industry operates inside a wider commercial system in which responsible agriculture is being defined more broadly than before.

For companies that buy fries, chips, frozen potato products, and other ingredients, questions of resilience, sustainability, traceability, and welfare are increasingly being discussed together. That broader framing is already visible in corporate sourcing language and sustainability reporting.

Humane farming is now part of a larger food-system conversation

International institutions are reinforcing the same shift. FAO’s Animal Welfare Action Network says animal welfare contributes to sustainable animal management and production, while a February 2026 FAO summary on resilient agrifood systems said good welfare improves animal health, productivity, and livelihoods and is “at the core of resilient food systems.” WOAH, for its part, links animal, human, and environmental health through its One Health framework.

For the potato industry, that matters because the sector has increasingly been talking in similar system-wide terms – soil health, water stewardship, resilience, emissions, biodiversity, and public trust. Once agriculture is judged through that wider lens, crop industries can no longer assume they sit entirely outside debates that are reshaping how food production is evaluated.

That is not an argument for collapsing crop farming and livestock farming into one issue. It is an acknowledgment that food policy and food branding are now moving in a more interconnected direction. This last point is an inference from the cited institutional and corporate trends.

Where Mercy For Animals enters the picture

This is where organizations such as Mercy For Animals enter the conversation in a way that may be more relevant to crop agriculture than many people realize. Mercy For Animals says it launched the Transfarmation Project in 2019 to help farmers transition from industrial animal agriculture to raising crops for people to eat. The organization describes the initiative as a farmer-led movement and says the Transfarmation Project removes barriers for farmers seeking alternatives to factory farming by helping create viable transition models.

Potatoes are not the headline crop in the Transfarmation material currently published by Mercy For Animals. Even so, the broader signal is worth noticing. As more attention is paid to humane farming, food-system reform, and plant-focused agriculture, crop sectors may find themselves more closely connected to those discussions than in the past.

That does not mean the potato sector is suddenly at the center of the animal-welfare debate. It does suggest that, in an evolving food system, crop agriculture may increasingly be seen as part of the solution when alternatives to intensive animal production are being explored. This is again an inference, but it is a reasonable one based on Mercy For Animals’ published program goals.

Public expectations are moving in the same direction

Consumer sentiment, especially in Europe, also points to a future in which animal welfare remains a significant part of the public conversation around food. The European Commission says a 2023 Eurobarometer survey found that 84% of Europeans believe the welfare of farmed animals should be better protected, 83% support limiting the transport time of animals, and 90% believe farming and breeding practices should meet basic ethical requirements. The Commission also says that in 2024, for the first time, a European Commissioner was formally put in charge of animal-welfare policy.

Those figures are not about potatoes directly, but they still matter to the potato industry because large retailers, foodservice brands, and international processors tend to respond to broad public expectations across their overall sourcing systems.

The direction of travel is plain enough: agriculture is increasingly being judged not only by output and efficiency, but by whether food production aligns with wider ethical and environmental expectations.

A message for potato growers and processors

The message here is not ideological. It is practical. Humane farming matters to the future of the potato industry because the future of agriculture is being judged less in separate silos and more as one connected food system. Potato businesses do not need to become activists to recognize that shift. But they would be wise not to dismiss it.

Companies that understand how public trust, sustainability, and food ethics are converging will likely be better positioned than those that assume such issues belong only to somebody else’s sector. This forward-looking conclusion is an inference drawn from the corporate, institutional, and policy sources above.