FACTORS AFFECTING RETURNS FROM POTATOES 

 IN MASSACHUSETTS 



By Ronald L. Mighell' 

 Assistant Research Professor of Farm Management 



How Many Potatoes Should Massachusetts Grow? 



The potato crop is an important source of income on many New England 

 farms. In Massachusetts, apples and cranberries are the only cash crops, 

 otlier tiian market garden crops, which ordinarily exceed potatoes in value. 



Massachusetts farms produced between 2 and 3 million bushels of potatoes 

 annually from 1922 to 1926. This is estimated to have supplied only aliout one- 

 tenth of tlie annual consumption of the people within the State. Should more 

 liave been grown? Should more be grown now and in the years to come? 

 These questions cannot be answered definitely and at once for all farmers. 

 The answers will vary for different individuals and different grou])s. 



Certainly every Massachusetts farmer should ask himself several things 

 l)efore adding potatoes to his farm business or before changing the acreage 

 already grown. Is this a profitable crop for me to grow now? Will it be 

 profitable in the future? 



The answers to these questions will depend upon the farmer's costs and 

 iqjon the prices which he expects to receive. A mere glance at Figure 1 shows 



that the Massachusetts crop is very 

 small as compared with the production 

 of the United States, and has very lit- 

 tle to do with the price of Massachusetts 

 potatoes. Previous studies" have s^^own 

 that the total production in the late 

 crop states is one of the most import- 

 ant factors affecting the average price 

 of potatoes. Hence in any study of 

 probable future prices, attention must 

 be paid to trends in production in the 

 important potato growing states. Until 

 recently, at least, the value of potatoes 

 tended to increase faster than the gen- 

 eral price level or the prices of other 

 agricultural products. What may hap- 

 pen in the future is a question of balance l>etween the factors affecting 

 demand, and acreage and yield per acre as affecting supply. Sliould the 

 introduction of improved machinery in Maine or New York make it profitable 

 to expand potato acreage even in the face of increasing production and lower 



Figure 1. The Contribution of Massa- 

 chusetts and New England to the 

 United States Potato Crop. 

 (Average 1920-1925) 



-MAssACHusnrs 



1 The author wishes to acknowledge the great assistance given in this study by 

 Professor R. H. Barrett and IMiss Marian Brown of the Department of Farm Man- 

 agement ; and the helpful criticism of Professor J. A. Foord, head of the Department 

 of Farm Management, and of Director Sidney B. Haskell of the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station. 



-Working, Holbrook. 1925. Factors Affecting the Price of Minnesota Potatoes. 

 :\Iinn. Agr. Expt. Sta. Tech. Bui. 29. 



1922. Factors Determining the Price of Potatoes in St. Paul and Minneapolis. 

 Minn. Agr. Expt. Sta. Tech. Bui. 10. 



