ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Potato Council’s recent Potato Expo 2025, held Jan. 9-10 at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort and Convention Center, drew more than 2,000 attendees and over 200 exhibitors, making it the second-biggest potato event in the expo’s 17-year history.
“It’s really exciting when you think of the U.S. potato industry,” Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council, told The Packer. “It generates about $100 million a year for the U.S. economy, and over 700,000 jobs are in some way dependent on what begins here on America’s family potato farms.”
Bob Mattive, current president of the National Potato Council, says Potato Expo is the ultimate networking event for the potato industry.
“This is the premier event for the potato industry,” said Mattive, who is also a potato farmer in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. “It attracts growers and industry people from all over North America and beyond, and it’s a great opportunity for vendors to showcase their products and for growers to network. So, it’s just a great opportunity for everybody to come together in one big place.”
Out on the expo floor, labor and automation were hot topics as were disease resistance and sustainability.
“Labor and automation go hand in hand,” said Mattive. “The labor shortage affects everyone on the farm, in the packing shed, processors and retailers, so the industry is looking at the benefits technology can bring to ag and across the supply chain.”
Fox Packaging showcased its Haith EvenFlow Hopper that helps distribute the potato feed into bins and boxes, improves efficiencies, reduces bottlenecks and requires fewer people to run it.
The company also touted its optical sorter that identifies up to 13 different categories of defects as well as sorts and grades potatoes, said Rob Highfield.
“Potato Expo makes you realize how much goes into potatoes from the field to the potato on the plate — and we can go from that field level to the package,” he said.
Tomra spotlighted its 3A Series Premium Optical Sorter with artificial intelligence-enhanced features that it says offers superior foreign material removal, green potato removal, high capacity for a quicker harvest, a significant labor reduction and more.
“The machine is now able to see defects and abnormalities,” said Tomra’s David Serrato. “It takes pictures and then classifies defects in the potatoes.”
Overtime, through AI machine-learning, its sorting abilities improve, reducing the need for hand-sorting, Serrato added.
Automation was also in the spotlight at the Volm booth.
“Automation is key today,” said Volm’s Marsha Pozza. “A lot of new equipment and product introductions are designed to help to reduce labor. If you used to have 15 bodies on a line, now you can get that down to five.”
Volm featured two different solutions for optical grading in the booth. “With optical grading, you might only need two people on quality control,” said Daniel Mueller.
And it’s not about replacing humans with machines, Mueller added. It’s about providing solutions that allow businesses to reallocate labor to optimize resources and keep people on tasks that require a level of skill.
Everyone knows Idaho is the No. 1 producer of potatoes in the U.S., but consumers may not know that Colorado is No. 2.
At the Colorado Certified Potato Growers’ booth, Jon and Lyla Hathaway showcased “up-and-coming potato varieties” bred by Colorado State University.
While these spuds are in testing now, the goal is to offer the “next greatest thing,” said Lyla Hathaway, who added the industry is most hopeful about the CO15016-1RUsto with a Pomerelle russet parentage. The variety is resistant to multiple diseases including the PVY potato virus and powdery scab and is also tobacco rattle virus, or TRV, tolerant.
John Deere showed off its 8RX tractor options in 132-inch, 136-inch, 144-inch and 152-inch options, all of which can be used in conjunction with Spudnik potato harvesters.
“This is an industry of inches,” said John Deere’s Jeff Holmes, who highlighted the many ways the 8RX tractor offers potato growers ease of use, more power, greater traction, versatility and more.
“This is a great show to connect with people around potatoes,” said Al Giesbrecht of Canadian organic potato company Kroeker Farms.
Bayer’s Josh VanDeWalle gave a presentation on “Working Towards Regenerative Potatoes” on Jan. 9, in which he helped define regenerative agriculture.
The need for education around regenerative ag is real, VanDeWalle noted, pointing to a recent Purdue University study that found 71% of consumers are unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with the term.
So what does it mean?
“For me, it starts with the soil,” he said. “Soil health and yield in productivity is what is most important to farmers.”
VanDeWalle concluded that regenerative farming offers a “great opportunity” in agriculture in general and potatoes, specifically.
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