How Much of the World Potato Market Does the U.S. Still Control

According to Blair Richardson, who spoke at the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers conference, the U.S. used to control around 55% of the world's potato export market, but that percentage is now more like 23%.

“We’ve lost a lot of market share, but during that period, we’ve almost doubled our exports of potatoes, so we’ve increased our exports, lost massive market share, and what that means is demand for our products is growing more rapidly around the world than we can keep up with,” Richardson said, cited by Brownfield Ag News.

He continued by saying that despite significant gains in European potato output, their producers are unable to meet demand.

“They are so concerned that they can’t get all of the product they need for their frozen products, the frozen processors increased their contract prices by 40% this year. That’s on top of the 25% increase last year, and they still are not going to be able to fully contract all of the acreages they need to supply their processing plants,” the Potatoes USA president mentioned.

Last but not least, Richardson notes that exports of American potatoes increased by 28% over the previous five years and by 9% last year. Domestic retail sales, according to him, have also bucked the trend by increasing 6% from pre-COVID levels five years ago.