The 2022 growing season brought its own set of challenges for producers depending on the crop you grow and your location. These challenges varied from wet weather early on to another dry growing season in other areas.
Daniel Metheringham, is Vice-President of Agriculture at McCain Foods says potato growers faced those same challenges.
"If I look at Alberta, they've had a good harvest. We're looking at sort of budgeted yields in that region. There was some weather events, a hailstorm that caused a little bit of a concern, but overall we're looking good. Manitoba had a really tough start to the year. If we go back to spring, it was very wet and that delayed the planting period. Since then, we've had favorable conditions, but I don't think that crop could ever really catch up from the cold wet start they had in Manitoba. New Brunswick was more positive. I think the growing conditions the last couple of years actually have been really conducive to potatoes. So we are looking at a really good crop there, and also really good quality."
Metheringham says they have contracted growers in Manitoba, Alberta and New Brunswick that provide potatoes for the factories in those regions. There's a real buzz in the agriculture sector around regenerative agriculture and sustainability both of which fall in line with McCain's Regenerative Agriculture Framework.
He says its important to McCain that growers can manage not only financially but environmentally. "Whether it's enhancing crop diversity, looking at ecosystems or, most importantly, strengthening the soil. The soils are the lifeblood of growing potatoes, or growing all of our crops. So really protecting those soils and then we're looking at technology."
Source: PV Online