Half of the sweet potatoes grown in the United States come from North Carolina, where farmers cut back plantings this year because of declining prices for the root tuber. The farmers were dealt another blow in September, when Hurricane Florence swept across the state’s top sweet potato-producing counties. The extent of the damage caused by the hurricane will not be clear until the crop, which grows underground, is harvested, said the USDA’s Vegetables and Pulses Outlook.
“The concern is that flooded crops will have not only lower yields, and quality loss, but that the crops may not be suitable for human consumption or even animal feed,” said the USDA. Growers face a choice of harvesting early, to avoid rot, or delaying the harvest, to allow the crop to dry out. “Delays of sweet potato harvesting beyond November can be problematic as, over the past 18 years, November has been the peak month for shipments.”
Even before the hurricane, yields were expected to run 20 percent below 2017 because of a poor growing season — a cool spring followed by a dry summer, said the Growing Produce news site. Then came Hurricane Florence, which dumped 30 inches of rain in parts of eastern North Carolina. “No set figures are known yet, but individual growers are reporting their harvests are about 30 percent off of expectations.” One optimistic grower pointed out that the smaller crop should bringer higher prices per pound.
The USDA report said sweet potato shipments from North Carolina during September were 30 percent smaller than in 2017. The state produced a record 220 hundredweight (100 pounds) an acre of sweet potatoes last year for a total crop of 19.6 million hundredweight — the largest in 13 years, worth $346 million. The other major sweet potato states are California, Mississippi, and Louisiana.