Cranney Farms is a 113-year-old farm in Oakley, Idaho.
It's run by Ryan Cranney. He grows russet
potatoes. Recently Ryan was out on his
farm looking at 2 million of his
potatoes in this two-story pile.
The harvest would normally bring in about
$75,000 but the COVID pandemic
shut down restaurants across the country and
suddenly no one was buying.
And those potatoes that Ryan had paid to plant,
grow and harvest were gonna earn him nothing.
They were gonna rot. So he
decided to give them away.
Ryan took a photo of this mountain of spuds and
posted it on Facebook,
with a note that read, "free potatoes."
Ryan figured maybe a few of his friends would
show up and take some potatoes.
Instead, three hours later
there was a line of cars at his farm.
[cars honking]
Thousands of people came to claim
the produce giveaway.
People were filling up their truck beds
and packing their cars with potatoes.
Many came on behalf of food banks and elderly homes.
People came from as far away as
Nevada, Kansas and even Ohio,
which is a 24 hour drive.
supermarkets could not keep their
Supermarkets could not keep their shelves stocked.
And at the same time,
Ryan and farmers all over the country
were pouring out their milk, plowing
their lettuce back into the soil and
trashing their potatoes.
So what exactly is going on?
Well the food supply chain in the U.S.
has become really specialized.
Farmers like Ryan typically grow
the exact number and kind potatoes
that particular restaurants or stores need.
So once those restaurants didn't want
Ryan's crop, he was stuck with millions
of pounds of potatoes.
It is really difficult to switch from
growing for a giant fast food chain
to growing for a grocery store.
When Ryan sends his potatoes to
restaurants he normally packages and
ships them in either 50-pound boxes or
two thousand pound bags.
That is a ton of potatoes.
But those don't make any sense
for grocery stores.
Grocery stores need five to 10-pound bags.
And Ryan just isn't set
up to ship his potatoes that way.
To package all of his millions of potatoes
into grocery size bags,
Ryan would need a fleet of machines
called potato baggers.
And on his farm they only have one.
Right now Ryan has hundreds of
millions of potatoes in storage.
And he's grown them all for
specific buyers who ordered them months ago.
$6 million worth of pre-sold spuds.
They will keep until August.
But Ryan is worried that the
places that ordered them will not be able
to pay when the time comes and he'll
have a much bigger mountain of rotting potatoes.
Parts of our food chain are designed
to be super efficient and specialized
to get the freshest food
exactly where it needs to go
with as little waste as possible.
But that efficiency makes it really hard
to adapt when something changes.
And then you're stuck with a pile of
2 million potatoes that have no place to go.
[music playing]
