P.E.I. potato wart fallout
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A tractor operator on the W.P. Griffin Inc. farm in Elmsdale in western P.E.I. shreds up tons of potatoes using a snowblower. (John Morris photo)
by Zack Metcalfe
Whether it’s a Yukon Gold or a Russet Burbank, there’s nothing simple about the potato on your cutting board. Behind its thin skin and starchy interior lies millennia of careful cultivation and centuries of geopolitical controversy. It’s a lot to fathom while baking a shepherd’s pie.
Every potato you’re familiar with – red, yellow, white, purple – is just a variety of the same species, Solanum tuberosum, originating in the Andes of South America where people domesticated and hybridized wild potatoes for as many as 10,000 years. The Spanish exported Solanum tuberosum to Europe sometime in the 1500s, where it has been credited for ending much of the continent’s chronic famine, bolstering political stability, and even giving rise to several nations. Conversely, potatoes have featured in violent conflict, such as the so-called Potato War of 1778 between Austria and Prussia, both armies spending much of their time digging up tubers. The potato giveth and the potato taketh away, most famously in 1845 when potato blight struck Ireland, the loss of this single vegetable causing the deaths of about one million people.
Today, potatoes are the fifth most harvested crop in the world by volume, and the most consumed vegetable in North America. While they no longer trigger wars or famine, these modest tubers have never failed to be controversial, lately because of potato wart.
This fungus also originated in the Andes, co-evolving with Solanum tuberosum and finding its way to Europe sometime in the 1800s. Now it’s global, feeding on the living tissues of tubers to form cauliflower-like growths that often go undiscovered until the fall harvest. Potato wart is in no way dangerous to human health, nor does it kill infected potatoes, but it does decrease yields and can render entire harvests unmarketable. Potato wart is also extremely difficult to eradicate. Once established in a given field, its spores can hibernate in the soil for 40 years or more, waiting for the return of its host.
The first report of potato wart in North America came from Newfoundland in 1909, followed swiftly by outbreaks in the United States, specifically in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. Since this fungus can only spread by way of infected potatoes and soil, quarantine has often been the tool of choice, typically involving containment, testing, and planting restrictions on infected fields. But the U.S. went a step further, steadfastly refusing to import any potatoes from regions harbouring potato wart since 1912.
This policy served the Americans well. In 1994, potato wart was declared eradicated from the U.S. Only a few years later, however, this policy of zero-tolerance had its first major exception, when one of its key international suppliers came down with the fungus.
POTATO WART ON P.E.I.
It’s unclear exactly when potato wart arrived on Prince Edward Island. More than likely, it was brought by homesteaders planting infected potatoes in backyard gardens, introducing spores to the soil prior to 1912. Decades later, as P.E.I. became the largest producer of potatoes in Canada, these gardens would have been incorporated into larger and larger commercial fields until, on Oct. 24, 2000, potato wart was discovered in a field in New Annan. The field was quarantined, the U.S. locked its doors to P.E.I. potatoes for six months, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) scrambled to determine the extent of the infestation.
This was achieved with a regimen of contact tracing, soil testing, and the isolation of associated fields. No additional potato wart was found in 2001, and, in order to resume international trade while satisfying the precautionary approach of the U.S., the CFIA created the “Potato Wart Domestic Long Term Management Plan” (hereafter referred to as the management plan), detailing how the agency would prevent the spread of potato wart.
This management plan allowed the uninterrupted export of P.E.I. potatoes to the U.S. for almost 20 years, the only jurisdiction with potato wart in the world allowed to do so. In that time, a total of 33 fields on P.E.I. tested positive for potato wart, some related and some independent. In each case, the CFIA identified “index fields” (those contaminated), “adjacent fields” (those next door to index fields), and “primary contact fields” (those known to have shared equipment with index fields), and imposed a suite of restrictions on each, not least of which is a prohibition on the export of their potatoes to the U.S.
To date, 35,400 acres of P.E.I. farmland are under the management plan’s purview, everything from heavily managed index fields to lightly monitored primary contact fields. For context, there are 350,000 acres of farmland on P.E.I., which include potatoes in regular rotation.
“(This) particular policy has been effective for us and refined over the years,” said Gordon Henry, national manager of the CFIA’s potato and forestry sector, this past December. “It casts a wide net and it regulates a lot of properties that could be at risk, and assures that it responds quickly to a detection. It has an objective to contain and control potato wart, which it does effectively.”
But something changed in October 2021, when another two P.E.I. fields were found to harbour potato wart. In addition to the usual testing, contract tracing, and quarantining of relevant and related fields, the CFIA promptly prohibited the export of all fresh and seed potatoes from P.E.I. to the U.S. pending a lengthy investigation. Very suddenly, there were 300 million pounds of potatoes without a market.
DIFFICULT TO FATHOM
Prince Edward Island produces about a quarter of all potatoes grown in Canada, the largest output of any province. Most of these are processed into frozen products such as French fries, and since processed potatoes are not considered a vector for potato wart, they remain unaffected by export restrictions. About 10 percent of P.E.I.’s potatoes are sold fresh or as seed to the U.S., and it’s these which were trapped on P.E.I. by the CFIA’s export restrictions – amounting to roughly 300 million pounds.
It’s difficult to conceptualize 300 million pounds of potatoes, so when describing the situation to the general public, Greg Donald, general manager of the P.E.I. Potato Board, finds it necessary to provide illustrative examples.
“That’s enough potatoes – we did the math – to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto,” he said. It’s also enough to supply the annual potato consumption of nine million Americans. It’s enough that, were you to distribute those 300 million pounds evenly to everyone in South Africa, they’d each get a five-pound bag. It’s enough to feed every resident of P.E.I. their average potato intake for the next 30 years. But, of course, we don’t have 30 years to spare.
The issue is storage, said Donald. When harvested in the fall, your average Russet Burbank can safely sit in storage until August the following year, but most other varieties don’t have that kind of shelf life. Many of those stranded by CFIA’s export restrictions have already reached the end of their lifespan. With nowhere to ship all those potatoes, farmers have been forced to destroy them.
In order for so many potatoes to properly decompose, Donald said they must be shredded and then spread on the field in a layer thin enough to allow for an adequate flow of oxygen. And because even small shreds of potato are capable of taking root and starting a new plant, it’s important that all this shredding and spreading be done before Feb. 28, allowing enough extreme cold days to kill any stubborn bits of tuber. Satisfying all those criteria has, for many farmers, meant running over excess potatoes with a snowblower.
Just ahead of press time, the CFIA approved the export of P.E.I. potatoes to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, but not to the continental U.S. Donald said some farmers might have been able to divert potatoes to that reopened market, but for most of the 300 million pounds stranded on P.E.I., it’s simply too late.
“We were shocked when this all happened, because the (management) plan worked exactly the way it was supposed to,” said Donald. It’s his conviction that the management plan should have been allowed to do its job when the 2021 infections were discovered – quarantine the identified fields so exports to the U.S. could proceed apace. Why these two new discoveries of potato wart specifically – on Oct. 1 and 14 – resulted in export restrictions has not been justified to his satisfaction, said Donald. The P.E.I. Potato Board continues to insist restrictions be lifted.
LASTING CONSEQUENCES
But even if this happened tomorrow, Donald expects there will be lasting consequences to P.E.I.’s potato industry. The potatoes destroyed in late February were worth an estimated $120 million, and that financial hit will not be felt evenly.
Farmers growing the majority of their potatoes for processing will be fine, whereas those with 80 percent of their crop going fresh or as seed to the U.S. will face considerable financial uncertainty. And until export restrictions are lifted, intelligent planning on their part for the 2022 growing season will remain impossible.
And then there’s the market. Donald said that for several years now, the potato sector and thus potato prices have been relatively stable, but with P.E.I. out of the mix in the near or long term, other jurisdictions, such as the Columbia Basin (Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) might overplant to compensate for the shortfall in Canadian production. It will take time for the market to balance out, said Donald, with poor prices a likely consequence.
“Like everything else for the past few months, there’s so much unknown,” he added.
SEED GROWERS SUFFER
From 1978 until 2010, James Rodd grew seed potatoes on his farm in New Milton, P.E.I., and while he’s never encountered potato wart, he’s lost his share of harvests to export restrictions. In 1990, CFIA quarantined his potatoes under suspicion of PVYn (potato virus Y – necrotic strain). Then, as now, the U.S. closed its border to P.E.I. potatoes, and Rodd was left holding the bag.
“It was very discouraging to have a loader come in and take (my potatoes) to a compost site,” said Rodd, whose field ultimately tested negative for PVYn. “The (government) compensation was no help.”
The experience left Rodd keenly aware that when potato diseases strike P.E.I., seed producers are the first to suffer. Processed potatoes never have trouble crossing into mainland Canada or the U.S., and fresh potatoes can at least be treated with sprout inhibitors to reduce the risk of disease transmission. But seed potatoes need to keep their sprouts and to come in contact with destination soils, making them a prime vector for disease. Whenever restrictions are enacted, said Rodd, seed potatoes are squeezed the hardest, which he blames for the gradual decline in P.E.I.’s seed potato sector during the past several decades.
It’s for that reason that Rodd takes issue with the management plan, the provisions of which, he said, are too weak to eradicate or even prevent the spread of potato wart on P.E.I., with most of the risk borne by seed producers.
He highlights the fact that the management plan doesn’t actually prohibit planting potatoes on index fields. Instead, it mandates that no potatoes be planted for five years following the last detection of potato wart, at which point a bioassay and a soil test are conducted. If the bioassay is negative and fewer than five spores are found per gram of soil, planting of “resistant” potato varieties may commence. These are potatoes bred to resist potato wart, such as the Prospect potato, a variety presently owned by Cavendish Farms. These resistant varieties can only be grown for processing on P.E.I., and if they are grown on index fields without incident for 15 years, then, theoretically, the field can be used to grow non-resistant potatoes such as the Russet Burbank. But, to date, no field has graduated to this point. Throughout the 20-year process, there are strict guidelines for cleaning equipment and handling contaminated soil.
Farmers are allowed to grow susceptible potato varieties in primary contact fields if the fields consistently test negative for potato wart. Potatoes for processing and the fresh market can be grown in such fields, but not seed potatoes. And growers can’t export any potatoes from these fields to the U.S.
Rodd compares these restrictions to those of the European Union, where planting any potato on an index field is prohibited for at least 10 years following the discovery of potato wart, and may only resume with resistant varieties for an additional 10 years if no spores are found in the soil and bioassays are negative. Rodd considers the provisions of the management plan to be far weaker than this international standard, thus prioritizing the growing of processing potatoes on index fields over the long-term viability of P.E.I.’s seed sector, which will always take the brunt of outbreaks.
“It directly affects the seed producer way more when you have a border closure than it does French fries because there has never, ever been a restriction on French fries going into the United States,” he said. “We’re a stroke of the pen away from having no seed production on P.E.I.”
UNITED STATES UNEASY
In a presentation to P.E.I.’s standing committee on natural resources and environmental sustainability in December 2021, David Bailey, chief plant health officer with the CFIA, made it very clear why the two fields most recently identified with potato wart triggered export restrictions: our neighbours to the south didn’t like what they saw.
“The United States isn’t looking at just the (first) find or the second find,” said Bailey. “They’re looking at a 21-year history of finds. They’re looking at 33 different (finds).”
Potato wart has been discovered in P.E.I. fields in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2020. The 2020 discovery, which was on a seed farm, triggered a suspension of seed potato exports to the U.S. from November 2020 until March 2021.
Following the potato wart discoveries of October 2021 – the largest per-acre detections to date – the U.S. would have issued its own federal order banning the import of P.E.I. fresh and seed potatoes had the CFIA not initiated its own suspension, said Bailey.
The U.S. is not the only country that the CFIA is trying to satisfy. After the U.S., the nine largest markets for P.E.I.’s fresh potatoes include Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Saint Lucia, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica, all of which are still taking fresh potatoes.
However, seed potato negotiations have been more challenging because they’re often held to higher import standards. The CFIA has been able to secure some of P.E.I.’s largest seed potato markets in Uruguay, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines, whereas others have closed their doors, including Indonesia and Turkey, the fourth- and sixth-largest markets respectively for P.E.I. seed potatoes in 2020.
For the time being, the CFIA is conducting a thorough investigation of the state of potato wart on P.E.I. in order to satisfy partners in the U.S. before export restrictions can be lifted. This involves thousands of soil samples from fields across the province, a lengthy, weather-dependent process that could take until 2023. Bailey stressed that this is not necessarily the timeline for a removal of export restrictions.
