A spectacular 2025 growing season was not so great for potato farmers this year

This story was originally published by CPR News.

Bob Mattive married into the life of a potato farmer in Colorado’s San Luis Valley in the 1980s. Today, he still walks the fields with his sons just about every day through the summer to shovel up a few spuds to see how they’re growing.

The valley’s warm days and cool nights as well as its good and well-drained soil make the region ideal for potato production, Mattive said.

While Idaho is the undisputed heavyweight champion of U.S. potato production, Colorado is no slouch either. The state raises between about 80 and 90 square miles of potatoes, the vast majority of which are in the San Luis Valley. That ranks it sixth among states when it comes to overall potato production. And Colorado ranks second when it comes to a particular market: the fresh market. Those are the potatoes you buy in the produce section at the grocery store.

“The distinction is we don't have any processing per se,” Mattive said. “We don't make French fries or potato chips. Ours all go to retail establishments, restaurants, things like that.”

Colorado spuds ship all over the U.S.and into Mexico, though this year it’s a more complex picture. The weather for growing potatoes was excellent in 2025 nationwide. So good, farmers grew way too many, and prices this year have tanked.

“This is one of the worst price years I think I’ve experienced, in my 40+ years,” Mattive said.

Like with beef, eggs and other foods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture puts potatoes in broad “grade” categories.

U.S. No.1 potatoes are high quality. They have the right size and shape. They’re firm and free from specified defects.

U.S. No. 2 potatoes — they’re the runts of the litter. They might be smaller than intended or misshapen. These potatoes are still totally edible. But, in a year with massive national oversupply, No. 1 potatoes are selling for about the price a No. 2 normally does. The typical customers for Colorado fresh market potatoes may not want No. 2 crops at all.

Les Alderete runs Skyline Potato in Center, Colorado. It’s a middleman company between local farmers and customers. His company stores potatoes, then washes and grades them before packaging and shipping them out.

Current market conditions have forced him to be nimble. Recently, a truckload of lower grade russets rolled up to one of Alderete’s facilities, tumbling through a series of machines to sift out dirt and rocks. Alderete was able to make a new deal with an out-of-state processor for these russets. They’ll be made into mass quantity mashed potatoes or into potato salad.

“It’s helped us get the product moved,” Alderete said of these new processor agreements. “The grower’s still getting a little bit, not much, but he’s not having to pay to have it hauled off somewhere.”

Farmers are also able to send some of these unwanted potatoes to help feed cows. They donate to food banks. A Denver nonprofit recently gave away 21 tons of potatoes that were otherwise headed to a landfill for lack of a buyer.

Nevertheless, at some point there are still just too many. This year, an abnormally large percentage of them have been destroyed, dried out, broken up, and buried.

Those recent potato economics are the primary culprit, but not the only one. The down market kept potatoes in storage sheds longer than normal earlier this year, coinciding with a warmer-than-normal late winter and a record-setting heat wave in March.

“If they go in (storage) too hot and it's just hard to get 'em cooled down, they’re a living organism, and they just start to break down,” Mattive said. “A whole bin will just melt.”

Jeff McCullough, manager of Spud Seller in Rio Grande County, told the Alamosa Citizen he estimated 100 million pounds of San Luis Valley potatoes have been culled this year, between heat-related losses and unsold supply.

However, there is a strange silver lining to this tater tale: the 2026 drought in the Western U.S. It has not been a good year for potato production, and Bob Mattive said that has led to farmers planting fewer acres.

“We’re hoping that will be good for the market,” Mattive said, “so we won’t be oversupplying the market and have another bad price year.”

If prices get back to what the farmers are used to, of course that’s good for them. Though it also means the spuds you buy in the produce section might not be so perfectly shaped.