Posted on Mar 25, 2022
District 7010 Rotary and Rotaract clubs have been busy over the past few weeks delivering 220,000 pounds (and counting) of PEI potatoes to organizations involved with providing food programs to those in need - from Peterborough, Lindsay, Barrie, and Collingwood in the south, west to Sudbury, Elliot Lake and Blind River, and as far north as Kapuskasing.
 
This initiative has been undertaken in partnership with Prince Edward Island potato farmers, the Government of Canada, Second Harvest Canada, Manitoulin Transport, and the Nipissing District Social Services Administrative Board.
 

The potatoes came from Prince Edward Island, where a surplus of the island’s signature crop has piled up after export to the US was cancelled this year. Routine testing in the fall of 2021, uncovered some potato wart in two crops causing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to suspend the export of seed potatoes to the US. Later the suspension was extended to table and processing potatoes. However, most potatoes are free from the fungus, which is not harmful to humans. 

About 10 per cent of the 2021 crop of potatoes from PEI (300 million pounds) will be destroyed. Farmers are being given government funding amounting to about 8.5 cents per pound for the potatoes that are destroyed. 

In response, the Government of Canada is funding a program to have 290 million pounds of the surplus, safe potatoes, diverted to processors, packers, dehydrators, food banks and other markets.

Upon learning what the PEI farmers were dealing with, North Bay Rotarian Don Coutts, and project coordinator, investigated how Rotary could get involved and become part of the solution across our Rotary District of over 40 clubs and 1,400 members.