Potatoes: Per Capita Use Is 5 Percent Lower in 2011
Domestic consumption of French-fried potatoes has been relatively flat at 44 pounds per capita since 2006. Per capita disappearance of other frozen potato products such as shoestring, chunks, hash, and mashed, on the other hand, has declined sharply from 8.5 pounds in 2007 to 4.2 pounds in 2011.
Including the gradual decline of per capita use of fresh potatoes, U.S. per capita use of all potato products appears to be trending down from 125 pounds in 2007 to 110 pounds in 2011. These developments stem from the incrementally smaller supply of potatoes as production has not kept pace with U.S. population growth. Additionally, xport shipments have consistently topped 5 billion pounds since 2006, and reached 6.6 billion pounds in 2011, which helped reduce domestic consumption.
Using crop year prices, the U.S. supply of crop year 2011 potatoes totaled $4.9 billion in 2011, up almost 10 percent from 2010. After subtracting exports, total domestic use value was $3.4 billion, which is 5 percent higher than in 2010. The corresponding per capita use value (at wholesale prices) is $9.56, somewhat lower than 2008’s record $9.92. Of this, the value of processing potatoes used was $5.55 in 2011 and $4 for fresh potatoes.
