The North American potato industry continues to battle a misperception about the nutritional value of potatoes, according to the CEO of McCain Foods USA.

Frank van Schaayk was in Brandon this week for Manitoba Potato Production Days, where he talked about stagnant domestic demand for spuds. "I don't think market saturation has been an issue. The major impact for both processors and growers has been the decline in domestic consumption. The majority of that has been caused by a misperception around the goodness of potatoes," he says. "People are believing that they maybe eat too many of them, as opposed to recognizing that potatoes are a very efficient source of nutrition."

He says McCain and other industry stakeholders are trying to counter this misperception. "The Alliance for Potato Research and Education was created and is targeted exactly on that, to do fundamental research about the goodness of potatoes and to get this strong science-based messaging out to the nutritional community so we get that story correctly told in the marketplace," says van Schaayk.

Meanwhile, he says processors are also focused on growing emerging export markets. "With the flat to slightly declining domestic markets, if you want to grow, emerging markets is where the growth is today," he says. "We have to find ways to be competitive in those markets, both in the type of products and also in the logistics of getting the products there."