Starting January 1, 2026, Italy and Asia will join the U.S., Mexico, Pakistan, and China in offering Urschel Cutting Machinery alongside KRONEN Systems. This partnership will enable Urschel’s customers access to KRONEN’s food processing solutions, enhancing their processing capabilities. Urschel aims to provide innovative cutting methods while maintaining a commitment to customer support, ensuring seamless integration of their robust product offerings in the market.
In 2025, natural disasters and extreme weather reshaped the potato industry across multiple countries – with drought, floods, storms, hail, and water restrictions hitting yields, quality, and timing. The impact was not only fewer tonnes, but greater grade volatility, delayed planting and harvest windows, and higher storage risk from stressed tubers. From Maine’s drought disaster designation to Australia’s supermarket shortages, 2025 reinforced that resilience – water security, adaptable contracts, and stress-tolerant systems – is now a core business requirement.
After publishing a great number of stories on Potato News Today this past year, a clear pattern has emerged: the potato industry’s biggest shift is not only technical or commercial, but conversational. This editorial explores how reporting is moving beyond events toward meaning, placing greater emphasis on people, context, candour, and long-term stewardship – without losing sight of yield, science, or economics.
The day after Christmas arrives quietly, and for many people it’s when loneliness and worry return. In one small town, a woman looks at leftover potatoes and decides to make a big pot of potato soup, then shares it – first with her basement neighbour, then with an elderly man living alone, and finally with others who need a warm meal. No fanfare, no photos – just practical compassion, preserved dignity, and kindness carried door to door.
On Christmas Day in a rural town, a van loaded with “extra” potatoes – perfectly edible but off-spec for retail – arrives at a food bank to find the gate locked. Instead of turning back, the driver makes a call that brings volunteers out into the snow to unlock the warehouse and unload the pallets. The delivery sparks immediate action, with potatoes bundled into simple meal kits and taken the same day to seniors and motel families. in need
On Christmas Day, a small community centre pantry line becomes a lesson in quiet generosity when potatoes – the staple families rely on most – run down to the last bags. A young boy’s handwritten note asking for potatoes for his grandmother and sister prompts strangers to step forward, surrender their share, and pool money to buy more. No speeches, no spectacle – just practical compassion, preserved dignity, and a reminder that kindness can be beautifully simple.
This article argues that potatoes are entering a new era as science, technology, and market pressures converge. Faster, more precise breeding, emerging genetic tools, and measured agronomy are improving resilience and predictability under climate volatility. Storage is becoming instrumented and professionalized, reducing losses and protecting quality. Processing is expanding into high-value ingredients, while circular models turn by-products into revenue. Automation stabilizes labour-intensive operations.
Europatat is hiring a Freelance Data Manager to support its Brussels team in data analysis and advocacy for the European potato sector. The role involves collecting, managing, and analyzing data related to potato trade and sustainability. Responsibilities include monitoring EU statistics, liaising with partners, analyzing trends, and preparing reports. The Data Manager will also enhance Europatat’s internal databases.
Entering 2026, the “Age of the Potato” article argues that converging pressures and breakthroughs are elevating potatoes from staple to strategic asset. Climate volatility, food security needs, precision breeding, smarter storage, and expanding processing are unlocking higher yields, nutrition, and ingredients. Beyond food, potato starch and by-products are feeding bioplastics, adhesives, paper, textiles, and pharma-cosmetics pathways. If innovation stays grounded, verified, and inclusive, potatoes can help reorganize food and materials systems.
Lamb Weston reported Q2 FY2026 net sales of $1.618 billion, up 1%, with net income rising to $62.1 million and diluted EPS at $0.44. Volume grew 8% as price/mix fell 8%, leaving constant-currency sales essentially flat. North America volumes improved enough to restart curtailed lines, while International profitability declined amid higher costs and Argentina start-up expenses. The company reaffirmed FY2026 guidance and raised its quarterly dividend 3% to $0.38.
The piece condemns the human-made humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, emphasizing the lived reality behind headlines: cold, flooding, collapsing health services, hunger, and children paying the highest price. It rejects blanket blame of Jews while holding political leadership and enabling policies accountable for prolonged civilian suffering. Using the humble baked potato as a symbol of dignity and normalcy, it contrasts everyday comfort elsewhere with Gaza’s deprivation, urging practical compassion and meaningful action.
The potato sector is aging in step with wider agriculture, and the risk is no longer abstract: skills, succession, and operational capacity are thinning across farms, storage, research, and processing. Using verifiable statistics from the U.S., EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan, the article explains why potatoes are especially exposed now, then outlines practical levers for growers, processors, researchers, financiers, and retailers to rebuild a viable pathway for younger entrants globally.
Recent testing by the University of Idaho Extension shows that 75% of Idaho potato fields are infected with the pathogen Spongospora, which causes powdery scab, impacting U.S. potato marketability, especially in exports to Mexico. A new two-year project funded by a $130,000 Specialty Crop Block Grant aims to develop management strategies against these diseases. Researchers will evaluate various control measures, including irrigation management and fungicides, to mitigate the spread and effects of powdery scab and PMTV.
Scientists in Punjab, Pakistan, have developed a potato variety, Ijaz-22, that endures smoggy conditions, addressing concerns over worsening air pollution impacting agriculture. With Punjab cities frequently ranking among the world’s most polluted during winter, the Potato Research Institute has created 12 fog-tolerant potato varieties. The focus now shifts to further enhancing smog tolerance to mitigate delays in harvests and reduce crop vulnerability to pests and diseases.