Ten Manitoba potato operations were named McCain Foods Top Growers last month in Carberry.

Swansfleet Alliance named top McCain grower

The annual designation acknowledged the top potato growers 
contracting with the company every year in Manitoba

McCain Foods has named Swansfleet Alliance, of Treherne and Bruxelles, its top Manitoba potato grower for the 2015 crop year. The announcement came at the annual Growers’ Banquet, held last month at the Carberry Community Hall with 190 attendees. Jim Waugh, who heads up McCain’s midwest manufacturing operations, was on hand for the annual event.

Make-ahead Mashed Potatoes (see recipe further down).

Potatoes are a forgotten vegetable

Perhaps potatoes aren’t trendy but they are delicious and nutritious and too often overlooked

If there’s one vegetable we take for granted it’s the potato. Despite being the most consumed vegetable in Canada, we rarely give potatoes a second thought. Perhaps this is because they’re not as trendy and exotic as quinoa or avocados. Maybe it’s because we’re afraid they’re unhealthy. Or maybe, we’ve just fallen into a boiled


white potatoes

Spud producers pull off second record crop

Prices are low and right now there’s no market for the surplus production

Manitoba potato growers harvested, on average, a record 348 hundredweight (cwt) an acre this fall, up eight per cent from the previous record of 322 cwt set last year. However, it’s not all good news, Keystone Potato Growers Association manager Dan Sawat­zky told the Keystone Agricultural Producers’ advisory council Nov. 3. “We are struggling to

New crops and varieties developed here will help expand market opportunities for vegetable farmers, says Keith Kuhl chair of Peak of the Market and Tracy Shinners-Carnelley, the grower co-operative’s director of research and quality enhancement.

Winkler-area research site to help expand markets for vegetable growers

Site will evaluate varieties and crop management techniques for 
fresh-market potatoes and carrots, and even sweet potatoes

Those orange-fleshed sweet potatoes Canadians love eating travel many miles to reach our dinner plates. Most are grown in the southern U.S., where a much longer and warmer growing season makes commercial production possible. Now new varietal research, underway near Winkler, may make field production of them possible in a Canadian climate too. Sweet potatoes


Manitoba gardeners need to be watching for late blight in their tomatoes and potatoes. These tomatoes have late blight and should be destroyed to protect Manitoba’s 64,500 acres of commercial potatoes.

Manitoba potato growers, gardeners need to scout for late blight

Home gardens can be a source of infection for the fungal disease that can spread to commercial potato fields

Manitoba gardeners need to scout for late blight in their tomatoes and potatoes — not just to protect themselves, but the provinces’s 64,500 acres of commercial potato production. Late blight — the same fungal disease responsible for the Irish potato famine in the late 1840s — was detected July 16 in a potato field near

Pink rot can mean significant storage losses, and a key control product is under threat from resistance.

Canadian potato growers may lose Ridomil for pink rot

Phosphites offer growers a strong alternative control option for pink rot

Canadian potato growers may be destined to lose the use of Ridomil to control pink rot. The issue is most serious in Prince Edward Island, where observers say the active ingredient metalaxyl is on the verge of being rendered ineffective. To some degree it is a looming problem across the country, according to a recent


Wireworm are set to take a bite out of potato fields and can be tough to control.

Manitoba potato growers brace for wireworm issue

The loss of Lindane then Thimet has resulted in growing and booming wireworm populations across Canada

A budding wireworm problem for Prairie potato growers is the result of losing two key chemical control products. According to Bob Vernon, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Agassiz, B.C., that lack of control options makes it a question of when, not if, the problem shows up. First the organophochlorine pesticide Lindane

European corn borer might prefer grain crops normally, but it’s not opposed to settling into a potato crop too if conditions are right.

Corn borers develop taste for potatoes

Canadian potato growers found a new insect foe in the 2015 season — European corn borer. Ordinarily the pest prefers maize and other grain crops, but when conditions are right it will move on and hit other crops hard, including potatoes. Ian MacRae, an extension entomologist at Minnesota’s Northwest Research and Outreach Center, told Manitoba


Blackleg is just one disease that can be caused by strains of the Dickeya pathogen.

Use only local seed to slow Dickeya and other pathogens

Europe has been grappling with a similar problem for years 
and we should learn from its experience

Imported seed bearing new pathogens is a threat to the Canadian potato industry, according to a U.S. researcher. Neil Gudmestad, a distinguished professor of plant pathology at North Dakota State University, was in Brandon this January to deliver a lecture on the importance of planting locally produced seed at Manitoba Potato Production Days. “There are

Manitoba potato growers harvested a record crop this year, says Dan Sawatzky, manager of the Keystone Potato Growers Association Inc., which represents processing potato growers.

Record yields for Manitoba potato growers in 2015

A long growing season boosted yields in a year when farmers had to 
contend with hail, heat, insects and disease

Manitoba potato growers harvested a record crop of spuds this fall, says Dan Sawatzky, manager of the Keystone Potato Growers Association Inc. Yields averaged 315 (hundredweight) bags an acre on 67,300 acres of processing, table, chipping and seed potatoes,” he said in a recent interview. “Coupled with that, we got a slight increase in prices,”