02/03/06 Japan will take fresh chipping spuds

Washington Ag February 3, 2006 In what will be a first, Japan has agreed to import U.S. chipping potatoes. John Toasperin, Vice President of International Marketing for the US Potato Board says it is an historic agreement, something the U.S. industry has been working on for 25 years. He says the agreement, which applies to chipping potatoes destined for processing in Japan, has strict protocols basically keeping the potatoes in a controlled environment from the time they leave the shed through processing in Japan. Toasperin: "It is important to remember that the reason the Japanese agreed to this, one of the reasons, is that they run short of potatoes in the time window I described. So this is a way to meet the needs of their plants and at this point we are not competing directly with the Japanese growers because this is a time frame when they were unable to meet the demand." 28 Toasperin says there won't be a flood of potatoes this first year which will be sort of a test and he didn't want to speculate on numbers about the long term potential, but he says it could be significant for U.S. growers and the Pacific Northwest is well positioned to meet the market. Initial shipments to Japan will be going out of Idaho, California and Texas. I'm Bob Hoff.