Potatoes in Canada

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Connecting with growers and experts – online

The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool for accomplishing all kinds of tasks, not least among them connecting with colleagues and experts in your field. Tools such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs are being used by farmers to find and share answers, but also to do things like alert other growers in the area about a pest outbreak, or even notify neighbours about spraying.

June 10, 2013  By Treena Hein


Growers now have smart phones and are beginning to use some of the apps to access weather and commodity price updates. The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool for accomplishing all kinds of tasks

One avenue for connection is an Internet forum, like the one the Oregon-based Potato Variety Management Institute (PVMI) launched in February 2011. “It’s a place to post questions and respond to the queries and comments of others,” says PVMI web manager John Guerin. “The initial launch looked promising and the community is slowly growing.” Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 10, 2012, there were 1500 visits to the forum from about 750 different visitors, and 27,202 page total hits (an average of about 18 individual page hits per visit).

The forum was promoted through the PVMI website, in newsletters, at trade shows and during presentations at events. “The topics were very numerous at the start, but we pared down the list to what was most industry-specific and what people needed information about,” says Guerin. The eight topics right now are Business, Marketing (two conversation “threads”), Crop Talk, Seed Talk (eight conversation “threads,” most with over 300 hits each), Variety Talk (two threads), Storage Talk, Computers & More, and Machinery & Equipment. PVMI also offers the chance to “blog” (writing posts on a particular topic in a “weblog”), but no one has responded to the offer so far. Guerin says, “We have also secured PVMI accounts on Twitter and Facebook, but we haven’t put them to use yet.”

Dr. Ataharul Chowdhury has found that Twitter and Facebook are the most used social media tools/platforms in Canada’s agriculture industry, with YouTube and blogs the next most-used tools; he has catalogued about 300 in total. Chowdhury is a postdoctoral research fellow in the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design & Rural Development studying agricultural social media use in Canada and beyond. “The use of tools has increased dramatically, perhaps, in the last year or two,” he says. He has found that the use of these tools is mostly used for farmers to receive disseminated information, but he’s also studying platforms and tools (such as forums) where dialogue and interaction is the focus.

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What’s available to potato growers?
The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) “Potato Research Centre” in Fredericton, New Brunswick has offered up-to-date online information on the AAFC potato selections release process, as well as the descriptions of advanced selections available to growers for commercial evaluation at the website www.agr.gc.ca/potato-cultivars. AAFC potato breeder Dr. Benoit Bizimungu says, “We are also looking into using other web-based tools and social media – for example, to cover our annual ‘Potato Selection Release Open House’ event.”

Prince Edward Island’s potato industry co-ordinator, Brian Beaton, says, “We e-mail out our IPM updates and use the web for lots of meeting and other updates. I also ‘text’ a number of growers, which is a fast way to get information out. So far we don’t use Twitter a lot, but I know there are some farm sectors that do. I think that things like Twitter will get more popular.” Beaton notes that the growth of social media use will be driven more and more by younger farmers.

In addition to planting and harvest reports, a seed directory and an industry calendar, the Potato Growers of Alberta (PGA) website features a newsletter (written by an American consultant) that is only available online. However, PGA executive director Helmut Leili notes that all of this information is already known by growers, and that the website only receives about 200 hits per month. “Person-to-person communication is still very important in potato farming,” he notes. “The average age of a Canadian potato grower is about 55, and when they can pick up the phone and talk to each other, agronomists, suppliers and so on, they don’t see the need for much Internet-based communication. They already have their ways of getting and sharing information, and it works well for them.” PGA has no plans to add more features to its site or to use social media tools at this point.

Ontario Potato Board (OPB) manager Don Brubacher and Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) potato specialist Eugenia Banks say that Ontario potato growers do use the Internet like everyone else to access information about farming, and that seems to suffice. “There are excellent websites with good up-to-date information on most potato topics,” says Banks. “Ontario potato growers usually do not use forums or Twitter. They get the latest potato information by using the avenues the Potato Board and OMAFRA offer.” These include the Ontario Potato Field Day every August, the Ontario Potato Conference held in March (speakers from Canada, the United States and Europe provide info on the latest research and new technologies), the annual OPB meeting and the OMAFRA Potato Update, which is faxed to readers every week during the growing season.

Charlottetown, P.E.I.-based United Potato Growers of Canada updated their website in August 2012, and are just beginning to track hits. The site features a blog covering topics such as the drought of 2012, potato planting acreage, and potato storage holdings. UPGC general manager Kevin MacIsaac says he’s not sure where Canadian potato growers are with wanting or needing more Internet-based communication. “There’s always the possibility of adding a Twitter feed, Youtube video links or other web-based tools to help growers get answers and/or connect with each other, but it takes time to get things like that going,” he says.

“One possibility that stands out is smartphone apps. The US Potato Board has one so that growers can easily access market prices. The potato industry is a little behind in doing things like using apps, but we’ll catch up. Other sectors such as grains and oilseeds are quite savvy with that.”

In Kenya, several apps are used by many of the 790,000 potato farmers. To avoid middlemen who offer them poor prices, about 2000 farmers in the Nairobi area are using an app to directly contact hotel and restaurant owners, access daily commodity prices and more. US development agency USAID is providing funding. Other ag-related apps being used in Kenya include M-Farm (information about retail food prices), iCow (cattle information), M-Shamba (best cropping practices), and FarmPal (farming trends and methods).

Beaton notes that many P.E.I. growers now have smartphones and are beginning to use some of the apps to access weather and commodity price updates. “In the near future, social media may become more popular among provincial growers,” says Banks. “Time will tell.” 


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