United’s Mid-June 2005 Progress Report

Contents: 1) New Manager 2) What’s Happenin’ 3) Acreage Buyout 4) United Grows 5) Is United the Answer?

1.) NEW MANAGER: United of Colorado now has a full-time manager, Dwight Freeman. Many of you have worked with Dwight before when he was a bank vice-president and loan officer. Needless to say, Dwight is intimately familiar with Colorado growers and Colorado potatoes. Over the years, he has seen good times and bad: new pickup years and those lose-your-shirt years. In addition, he can provide a banker’s perspective and an understanding of financing, which could help United when we’re asking a grower who has been stretched thin to give us a big acreage assessment.

   Until now, volunteers spent endless hours getting United work done. Now we have a full-time professional on board. This is becoming true of the other United areas: Idaho has had Jerry Wright for months; Washington has a full-time manager; Wisconsin has Angela Hemauer, from the Wisconsin Vegetable and Potato Growers Association. There is simply too much work for volunteers to accomplish without professional help.

   United intends to be a powerful tool for potato growers long into the future, and this is a big step in that commitment.

2.) WHAT’S HAPPENIN’?:Most of us have been out of touch with United during the planting season. Has anything been happening?

   Here in Colorado, work has continued quietly on the acreage buyout program, in unison with other states. Plans are being made for yield surveys and harvest. United America is working to set the ’05 fall market. We would like the year to start with a good price, and then hold that. We would like to reduce market chaos with prices jumping up and down. Historically, the market has started well as Washington brings the big carton potatoes to market in August. Last year, the market was glutted as Idaho came on with their early Norkotahs, some of which had to be sold because of insufficient storage. The member states of United America have been working together to try to avoid this mess in ’05. United of Colorado representatives attend national meetings of United America every three weeks.

   Of course, work has continued to clean up the ’04 glut to avoid damaging the ’05 crop. Weekly national conference calls between all the major potato areas are held in conjunction with weekly local conference calls. With United pressure, the carton market has soared. United is credited with making this happen much faster and in smaller increments than would have occurred naturally, resulting in millions of dollars to growers.

3.) ACREAGE BUYOUT: Details are still being withheld, since there are still planters running out there! However, news is good. Considering the lack of advance warning and the pain involved, we are very pleased. Growers were stunned when first asked to cut 10% or spend $27 per acre. The vast majority of Colorado growers pitched in and participated!

   Results appear really good in Idaho. Wisconsin didn’t want to cut acreage, since they had some shortage this year and a good market, but they pitched in to help in Idaho. Washington had most of their crop planted when the program was announced, but like Wisconsin, they contributed financially.

   FLYOVER ACREAGE COUNT to be July 1. Detailed numbers will be available shortly after.

4.) UNITED CONTINUES TO GROW: Growing areas to continue to join the movement, and now United represents 75% of the potato acres in the U.S.Member cooperatives now include the following states: Idaho, Klamath Basin, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Wisconsin. The Mid-Atlantic region is organizing (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina) a similar United to the Southwest regions (Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, California-Bakersfield) and presentations are being made in Nebraska and Kansas. Maine grower representatives are planning on attending UNITED's next board meeting as investigators. PEI and New Brunswick, Canada are participating as consultants to UNITED, and are working on programs similar to UNITED's. It is hoped that UNITED eventually may help communications and coordination with cooperative grower organizations across North America. Be sure to visit the web sites for United of America and United of Washington. Links are available on the Colorado site.

5.) IS UNITED THE ANSWER?

Remember the REALLY BAD YEARS?Your crop looked the best it had in years. But then you’d start hearing stories in late July and August about how great the crop was everywhere! Sure enough, even before you could start harvest, the price was plunging. You might have grown the best crop of your life, but lost the most money ever.

Remember the REALLY GREAT YEARS? About mid-July, when it was too late to change anything, you would start hearing stories about problems elsewhere. Maybe too dry here or a late frost there: but enough problems to reduce the size of the crop. Maybe you had a few problems yourself, and were a little worried that your yield would be down. But when harvest arrived, your worries were over. It was easy to imagine that the trucks leaving the field were loaded with gold ore, not just potatoes.

We all know the difference between great prices and horrible prices: the size of the crop. Just a little glut on the market produced nightmare prices. If the crop was a little short, it was suddenly in great demand.

In the past, it took Mother Nature to turn garbage into gold: there had to be some disasters to prune down the crop.

Unfortunately, growers have been getting better and better at outwitting Mother Nature: better irrigation systems to beat drought; better chemicals to beat disease; faster equipment to beat the big frost; and better varieties for higher yields. Now the odds favor a glut for most years, with the glut’s headaches and sorry prices.

CAN UNITED GROWERS CONTROL the CROP? We’ll have to wait until harvest for an answer to that. After all, United only began formation a matter of months ago, about mid-January for Colorado. Many growers had already bought potato seed and made plans. In just over 3 months they would take the planters to the fields. The members of United of Colorado, with help from United of America, gave great contributions of time and made Herculean efforts, but faced very difficult tasks without any previous experience.

SUCCESS REQUIRES COOPERATION! United is a GROWER COOP. Its success depends on growers working together; neighbor helping neighbor. The willingness of growers to pitch in and work together has been remarkable. Keep working together!!!