Idaho Potato Harvest Preparations Underway at Hansen Farms Amid Heat and Water Concerns

Farmers statewide are preparing for one of the busiest times of the year as the annual potato harvest approaches. Located in Rupert, Idaho, Hansen Farms is a family-owned operation that has had four generations of Hansen farmers. Planning for the harvest begins long before the tractors hit the fields, with the preparation process starting up to 10 months in advance. 

Brian Hansen, Fourth-Generation Farm Operations Manager at Hansen Farms:

"We actually start preparing for harvest in the wintertime. Last December we started going through machinery, planning on any kind of changes that we were going to make from an operation standpoint and how we set up our machinery. That carries all the way through spring and summer, and you can see behind [us] we’ve got equipment starting to get set up. We test run things, we look for just problems that we can fix to help deliver the best quality potato that we can."

Heat and water availability raise concerns

Planning in winter can not prepare farmers for the heat that Idaho has seen this year, and with the hot conditions throughout the summer, Hansen says water availability could be at a premium come next season. 

Brian Hansen:

"I think this is the first year where we’re actually hearing and seeing people talk about conserving more water and cutting that water back. Hoping that we have a good winter because next year I think is when we’re really going to see an impact on water availability."

With drought conditions, it also brings along heat that can damage the crops if not handled properly. 

Brian Hansen:

"The hot conditions have impacted our crop over the last three to five years, I would say. It makes it age more quickly, it’s harder to keep the moisture that we need in the fields. That heat has definitely played a role in potato quality for this year."

Prepping the crop

While getting the machinery ready and maintaining the fields is half the battle, preparing the potatoes themselves is the most critical step before harvest. 

Brian Hansen:

"Potatoes have a really delicate skin this time of the year. By getting rid of the potato plant, it actually starts to make that skin a little more hardy so that we don't scrape it all off, which helps protect against disease and bruising. That’s the biggest thing, and then the other part that plays into that is also the moisture—where we keep that out and how dry we let those potatoes get. So we’re kind of balancing both the kill date on potatoes as well as irrigation schedules."

Hansen Farms grows seven different varieties of potatoes across approximately 60 fields, including:

• Burbanks
• Norkotahs
• Clearwaters
• Rangers
• Reveille
• Kings
• Dakotas

Preparing for storage

Storage facilities are also being prepped to handle the harvest yield. Each storage shed at Hansen Farms can hold up to 10 million pounds (4.54 million kg) of potatoes. For reference, if the average weight of a potato is six ounces (170 grams), nearly 27 million individual potatoes can fit inside just one of these sheds. The local harvest season kicks off in September, with Hansen Farms scheduled to begin their harvest on September 14.