Bryce Loewen is a 28-year-old potato farmer in Winkler, Manitoba who believes more young people should be eating more spuds because of their significant nutritional value.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he supports a new fresh potato marketing campaign from Manitoba\u2019s grower-owned vegetable marketing board, Peak of the Market. The campaign, called Potahto Lovers of Manitoba, was launched in 2017 and is squarely aimed at the millennial generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like that they\u2019re targeting a younger demographic, hopefully someone who, in the next five to 10 years, is going to take up more of the buying power in our economy,\u201d says Loewen.<\/p>\n
Loewen also likes that the campaign is spreading its message primarily through social media, and he can appreciate why this resonates so well with millennials.<\/p>\n
\u201cI coach a high school basketball team and these guys are all 10 years younger than me,\u201d recalls Loewen. \u201cWhen I was in high school, our main form of communication was texting, but these guys don\u2019t even text with their friends or girlfriends anymore. It\u2019s all through Instagram or Twitter\u2014all these social media outlets. I think that\u2019s their main source of connection and information.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loewen is among those who believe potatoes are a good vegetable that\u2019s been given a bad rap, but he believes things are turning around as more people get the message about the many health benefits of potatoes.<\/p>\n
Under its health and nutrition advocacy mandate, the Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC) supports government efforts to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy diet for Canadians.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very important to try and get information out there\u2026to the general public, so they know exactly what they are buying and everything that\u2019s involved in producing their food products, so they can make an informed decision,\u201d says Loewen.<\/p>\n
Loewen has been working full-time at his family\u2019s farm, called Garden Valley Vegetable Growers, since he graduated with an agri-business degree from the University of Manitoba in 2015.<\/p>\n
Garden Valley Vegetable Growers produces table potatoes, typically three types of reds and three types of yellows, each year. According to Loewen, the 3,000-acre farm also grows corn, soybeans, canola, and wheat, \u201cbut our big cash crop is potatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loewen acknowledges that potatoes aren\u2019t the easiest crop to grow. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a challenge,\u201d he says. \u201cIt gives you a reason to get up in the morning, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the biggest challenges is keeping a lid on late blight, the pervasive fungal disease that can hammer potato yields if conditions are right for infection. Like many potato growers, Loewen relies heavily on a fungicide that contains the active ingredient chlorothalonil as the farm\u2019s primary protection against late blight.<\/p>\n
Loewen typically sprays this fungicide eight to 10 times during the potato growing season. However, Health Canada\u2019s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) has proposed cutting back chlorothalonil applications in potatoes to just once a year\u2014a move that would seriously impact how potato producers manage late blight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we get restricted to one application per year, that\u2019s about 10 per cent of what we normally would apply,\u201d Loewen says. \u201cWe would have to find new chemicals, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loewen has used other products in his pesticide mix to help control late blight, but he\u2019s found chlorothalonil to be the most cost-effective. It\u2019s also the fungicide that he\u2019s had the most success with. \u201cI would say it\u2019s definitely the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Loewen, chlorothalonil offers multi-site protection and is often used as a tank-mix partner with some of the newer single-site fungicides. He says some fear that, without the benefits of a broad-spectrum product like chlorothalonil in the tank mix, the single-site fungicides could eventually lose their effectiveness due to resistance.<\/p>\n
Under its crop protection advocacy mandate, CHC develops policies and programs that help ensure the economic viability and competitiveness of Canada\u2019s fruit and vegetable growers, and one of the ways it does this is by advocating on behalf of growers via the PMRA process for re-evaluating crop protection products. CHC has spoken out against reducing uses or deregistering crop protection products when there is no replacement product that the horticultural industry considers effective, such as in the case of the proposed limitations on chlorothalonil usage in potato.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bryce Loewen is a 28-year-old potato farmer in Winkler, Manitoba who believes more young people should be eating more spuds because of their significant nutritional value. That\u2019s why he supports a new fresh potato marketing campaign from Manitoba\u2019s grower-owned vegetable marketing board, Peak of the Market. The campaign, called Potahto Lovers of Manitoba, was launched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[72,73],"class_list":["post-24953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-articles","tag-fresh-thinking","tag-legacy"],"yoast_head":"\n