THE “Spudpocalypse” is here, according to an advertising campaign warning of an impending potato shortage.
A Canadian group called PEI Potato Board launched the aggressive campaign targeting Massachusetts shoppers in response to the United States Department of Agriculture’s halt of potato shipments from a Canadian island.
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province known for its potatoes — the spuds bring in $1.3billion yearly.
The island’s farmers ship between 250million and 300million pounds of potatoes to the US each year, according to Greg Donald, general manager of the island’s potato board.
In the past, Massachusetts has been the second-largest American market for potatoes, but an export ban imposed by the Canadian government in November put a sudden stop to the potato pipeline due to an outbreak of a disease called potato wart.
But according to the campaign, the potatoes are perfectly fine — the group even goes as far as to say that “potato producers in Canada are being forced to destroy potatoes that were meant for American dinner tables.”
The advertising campaign is called Stop the Spudpocalypse and the group is using different social media outlets like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to warn Americans of empty shelves and rising prices.
The campaign’s website encourages visitors to send an email to Security of Agriculture Tom Vilsack asking him to allow potato shipments from Canada into the US again.
However, potato wart is a dangerous disease to the agriculture economy.
The soil-borne pest produces sores and cauliflower-like growths on potatoes, despite posing no threats to humans besides destroying crops and economies.
The drop in the potato supply is a result of the avoidance of potato warts, hence the “Spudpocalypse.”
Kendra Mills, the marketing director for the PEI Potato Board, said that the use of the seemingly silly term is deliberate and that it signals the magnitude of the shortage.
“That speaks to the size and enormity of the problem,” Mills said. “We feed 9million Americans every year.”
“We ship 300million pounds of potatoes to the US every year, and that’s a hard number for people to really fathom.”
The USDA announced Tuesday that PEI can resume exports of potatoes to Puerto Rico on Wednesday, but the situation in Massachusetts and the rest of the country remains the same.
“We are very hopeful that we will see the market reopening through the United States for table stock potatoes soon,” said Marie-Claude Bibeau, the Canadian minister of agriculture.
