PEI Potatoes Are Moving To Puerto Rico Once Again

Feb 09, 2022

Shipments of PEI potatoes to Puerto Rico resumed this morning.

It's seen as the first step in resuming normal trade of the island spuds to the US, nearly 3 months after the Trudeau government imposed an export ban. The ban was issued by Ottawa after two more cases of potato wart fungus were found in fields on the island back in October. Both cases of the fungus, which isn't harmful to humans, were found in fields that were already tagged for the disease and potatoes grown in that soil were not part of exports to the US.

Earlier this month, following a meeting with her US counterpart, federal ag minister Marie Claude Bibeau was confident that shipments of potatoes from PEI would soon be returning to Puerto Rico and soon after, the US mainland.

Last week, the federal government announced a compensation package for PEI potato growers forced to destroy part of the record harvest, because it had nowhere to go. It's believed growers were forced to destroy the equivalent of 700 semi loads of table-ready potatoes.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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