Potato availability in 2020 may be impacted by the difficult harvest.
Statistics Canada is reporting that more than 360,000 acres of potatoes were planted this year, however more than 20,000 acres were not harvested. It's estimated that 13,000 of those acres are in Manitoba.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University, notes raising the price of potatoes past a certain level may spook consumers.
"They may actually decide to keep prices as they are, and if so, because of this strong demand for potatoes in Canada for french fries, chips, whatever, this could actually become a problem for the market. So we could potentially run out of potatoes by March or April. For now, there's no reports of any shortages or anything like that but if demand actually remains strong, and prices remain somewhat low. That could be a problem."
He notes if that happens, we may start to see smaller serving sizes for items such as french fries at our favourite fast food restaurants.
"It's not unusual to see "shrink-flation" occur, when input costs increase," said Charlebois. "That's basically the nature of food packaging, food service. It's done in a subtle way, often consumers are asked to pay the same price but they get less in terms of quantities and this is the one strategy that a lot of people in the food service industry or even in food processing use in order to save some money or to offset increases upstream."
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