PEI potato trade with United States set to resume

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Prince Edward Island will soon resume its potato trade with the United States – good news for farmers preparing this year’s crop but coming just days too late for some growers who had destroyed viable inventory.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that a halt on Canadian imports would end, nearly four months to the day after it was imposed. Last November, the Canadian government suspended the export of fresh seed potatoes after some PEI fields were found to contain a fungus that can easily spread to other crops. Washington had warned it would set a ban if Canada did not act first.

Not all crops are getting the green light. While table potatoes – those for cooking – will be allowed across the border, seed potatoes, used to plant the next year’s crop, will still be barred.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said the resolution was reached after conversations with her American counterpart, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

While the U.S. agency “wanted to look at the whole industry altogether,” Ms. Bibeau said, it agreed to consider table stock separately. After concluding PEI’s table potatoes could be imported safely, the United States agreed to reopen trade with a number of “reasonable and science-based” safety measures in place, she said.

Trade is expected to resume after the USDA publishes a federal order outlining the required mitigations for table stock potatoes. This is expected to be in about 10 days, according to Suzanne Bond, a public affairs spokesperson for the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

These mitigations require imported table stock potatoes from PEI, and the seed potatoes used to produce them, must originate from fields not known to be infested with potato wart, or related to fields with the wart. They have to be washed in PEI to remove soil and treated with a sprout inhibitor. They are subject to official inspection as well.

Potatoes must also be considered Grade 1, which means they are rounder and easier to wash. This minimizes the risk of carrying soil and transmitting the fungus.

“Farmers were waiting for clarity to know what they would be planting for the coming season,” Ms. Bibeau said. “They now know they can have a market in the U.S. following these conditions. That’s why it is such good news today.”

The Canada Food Inspection Agency will carry on with its full investigation of 35,000 soil samples over the next year and will continue to review its potato wart management plan.

The announcement was made just a week too late for many farmers, who recently have started destroying stock to open up inventory room. Colton Griffin, a third-generation potato farmer at W.P. Griffin Farm, said that just a few days ago his farm put about half of its potatoes through snow blowers on his field. Much of the rest have been slated for cattle feed.

“It was all perfectly good product that was supposed to be marketed,” he said. “I’ll probably sell about 2 per cent of what I would normally.”

Mr. Griffin said he will now be looking ahead more positively for next year’s crop. “My hope is that we can find a way to put this behind us for good.”

But the U.S. National Potato Council, the industry association representing American potato farmers, called the news disappointing, saying the safety requirements in place do not go far enough.

“Unfortunately, today’s announcement by USDA overlooks the severity of the disease,” the NPC said in a statement. “Should potato wart be transmitted to the United States, the economic consequences would be devastating and immediate.”

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