Prince Edward Island growers are in a miserable quandary under a federal ministerial order not to sell seed potatoes to other Canadian provinces or to the U.S. Since November 21, 2021, the Islanders have been banned from exports due to the findings of potato wart in two fields. 

It’s bad enough that 300,000 million pounds of potatoes are left to disintegrate on snow-covered fields, but the future hangs in the balance regarding the seed potato sector. Of the 86,000 total potato acres on PEI, 16,000 acres are devoted to seed production. 

“We need clarification from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on what we can do,” says Billy Cameron, vice-chair of the PEI Potato Board and a seed grower himself. He grows 300 acres of seed and tablestock potatoes near Hampton.  

“For our farm, some seed sales have been lost to other provinces,” he says. ‘My farm is built around potatoes and no crop can replace them. While more farmers have been growing soybeans and corn in recent years, the input costs have risen sharply.’

“I don’t know where CFIA stands at this point in time,” says David Jones, Canadian Potato Council, on February 14, “but I would think they would need to consider the progress on the two 2021 investigations as important to any decisions on the possibility of amending the Ministerial Order.”