MountainKing: Potato Pioneers

I am so, so excited to share something new with you all today! I normally focus on animal agriculture and today I am talking about potaoes! If you don’t already know, I am a major in the College of Ag at Texas A&M University. And we ‘agvocate’ as much as we can. This semester I am taking an Agribusiness class and have the greatest professor ever! This last week he brought in John Pope and intern, Jack Harris from a potato company to talk to us. I was beyond impressed. I went up to Mr. Pope after his presentation and asked him if it was okay to do a blog post on their company. He was totally cool with it, so I am here to share with you the most awesome potato facts you’ve ever heard!

MountainKing Potatoes are the current Potato Pioneers. They are making some huge efforts to make the potato industry a little more palatable to consumers. MountanKing knows that our generation cooks and prepares potatoes a lot differently than any previous generation. In the past, big family meals were cooked so that several mashed potatoes and baked potatoes were cooked at a time. Women stayed home a lot more and could cook all day. Now, people want food fast, and a lot of times just single servings. Our generation is also all about health. We don’t eat a lot of potatoes by themselves because they are full of carbs. If they’re made into French fries, they are high in sodium and they’re fried. Potato chips have the same problem.  We mainly eat the typical Russet potatoes as baked potatoes or fries. MountainKing has found ways to combat all of these generational demands!

The first thing these Potato Pioneers are doing is promoting different kinds of potatoes. One type is the fingerling potato. These mini potatoes are so cool! We actually got to take a few home with us to try. What’s awesome about these little fingerlings is that they could be the future French fry replacement!

If you try these:

• cut them into fourths
• sprinkle with olive oil and season salt (or sea salt)
• bake at 425° for about 20 minutes. 

They’re really good! If you know what Fuddrucker’s is, they taste a little like that! I love them! My boyfriend loves them too! And it’s so much cheaper than buying the frozen fries in the grocery store. Mr. Pope also gave us a way to cook russet potatoes quickly. I don’t make baked potatoes too often because they take so long to cook. He said that if you put them in the microwave for 6 minutes, and then finish on the grill or oven at 425° for 10 minutes, you will get the perfect baked potato! Another kind of potato that I haven’t tried, but plan to as soon as possible, is the butter gold potato. This potato is creamy, moist, and flavorful on its own! You don’t have to add any butter, or other flavorings for this to be a yummy dish. That’s got to be a lot less calories than adding your own butter right?!

I bet you didn’t know that potatoes actually have health benefits. I know we usually think about potatoes being full of carbs, since they’re a starch. However, an average russet potato (5.3 oz, skin on) has 620 grams of potassium compared to the 450 grams in a banana. That same potato also has 45% of the daily value of Vitamin C. MountainKing says potatoes are like “Nature’s Energy Bar.” On the same note, because the public is demanding it, MountainKing has started their first organic potato crop. To be organic, potatoes can only be naturally fertilized with no ‘harsh’ chemicals. Since this is only their first year producing organics, not a lot of people know about them. The people that do know about them aren’t always willing to pay the price though. There are several reasons that organic potatoes are more expensive: the organic crop yields less potatoes than conventional crops, it takes more land to grow organics, they have a shorter shelf life so more potatoes have to be produced to keep the shelves full, and because they use natural fertilizer it is harder to grow organic potatoes than conventional. So if you’re into organic potatoes then the price should make sense now!

Alright, I am a big promoter of sustainable agriculture, and if you have been reading my blog for a while then you know that. The great thing about potatoes is that they have all 3 pillars of sustainability! They're environmentally friendly, socially beneficial since we eat so much and they're really affordable! Potatoes are storage crops (meaning they have a really long shelf life and can be stored without fear of spoiling) and can grow in sandy soil where other crops won’t. That's one reason they have low environmental impact, as well as when it comes to water. It takes:

•       6.6 gallons of water to produce one potatoes
•       10.5 gallons to produce one slice of bread
•    10.5 gallons to produce  a glass of milk
•    18.4 gallons to produce one apple
•     35.6 gallons to produce one egg

That’s almost 40% less water than one slice of bread! You know what else I love about potatoes? Over 75% of the plant is edible compared to only 33% of a grain plant. That means less production waste! In order to keep production waste low, MountainKing has a niche for every potato! Any potatoes that are not good for human consumption are donated to ranchers to use as feed for their animals (cattle and sheep have a much easier time digesting things that us humans can’t). Any “cosmetically challenged” potatoes that have excessive spots, but are still edible, are donated to food banks across America. MountainKing donated 300 truckloads last year! Each truckload contains about 42,000lbs (125,000 servings) of potatoes.

I don’t think I have ever been so excited about potatoes since MountainKing came and spoke to our class. And I already eat a lot of potatoes! I am definitely going to start buying fingerling potatoes since they are so easy to cook! I definitely give MountainKing my stamp of approval. You can find MountainKing potatoes in several stores including Kroger, Wal-mart, Costco, Aldi and HEB. Everyone needs to go out and try butter gold potatoes and fingerling potatoes and let me know how they are! I would also like to thank MountainKing for giving students potatoes to take home, and for making potatoes an awesome subject to write about! Visit http://www.mtnking.com for more info, recipes and nutrition facts!