The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Thursday announced an agreement with Mexico’s national service for agri-food health, safety and quality (SENASICA) to allow shipments to Mexico of Canadian potatoes for consumption or processing.

CFIA said it will “work closely with the potato sector in the coming months as next steps are implemented.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Almost 93 per cent of Canada’s fresh potato exports by dollar value in the 2024-25 marketing year were to the U.S. alone.

Canada’s potato exports to Mexico today are almost entirely in frozen potato products. According to Statistics Canada export data for 2024-25, Canada shipped about 55,526 tonnes of frozen potatoes, valued at about C$77.7 million, to Mexico.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA/FAS) says Canada that year held about a 34 per cent share of Mexico’s total imports of frozen potatoes, compared to a 52 per cent share for the U.S. and 14 per cent for Belgium.

Meanwhile, citing information from Trade Data Monitor (TDM), FAS says the U.S. has been “Mexico’s sole supplier of fresh potato imports” in recent years. In the 2023-24 marketing year, those imports came in at 204,165 tonnes.

The bulk of Mexico’s potato consumption is supplied by its domestic growers, who produced about 2.12 million tonnes in 2024.

A 2025 FAS report on the Mexican potato market said its consumers favour the domestically-grown Alpha potato variety, and “the dominance of domestically produced potatoes in the Mexican market, accounting for 91 per cent of domestic consumption, limits awareness of other potato options among Mexican households.”

FAS noted Mexico requires any fresh potato imports to be packaged in 20-pound bags or smaller, adding that Mexican consumers prefer to hand-select produce and buy relatively smaller quantities more frequently.

Imported fresh potatoes in Mexico, FAS said, today go primarily instead to “restaurants seeking to offer differentiated premium products to their customers.”

Mexico’s new move to allow Canadian fresh potatoes follows a trade mission last October by Canada’s federal agriculture minister Heath MacDonald, during which the two countries “agreed to enhance regulatory and technical co-operation” under a 2025-2028 action plan.

Those talks continued during another trade mission to Mexico last month, led by Dominic LeBlanc, minister for Canada-U.S. trade, CFIA said Thursday. MacDonald also took part in that mission, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

The 2025-2028 action plan called for the two countries to make progress on a sanitary and phytosanitary work plan to improve market access for agricultural products for both countries’ consumers and processors, and on mutual recognition of electronic certification for plant, animal, aquaculture and fishing products.

The post Path cleared to Mexico for fresh Canadian potatoes, supplanting U.S. spuds appeared first on Country Guide.

This is the last of its informal seed modernization consultations before it publishes draft amendments to seed regulations the agency said in a news release. The process of modernizing Canada’s seed regulations has been ongoing since 2020 — since 2019 for the potato sector.

Up for feedback are a series of proposed changes to seed potatoes and Part 2 and 3 of the Seeds regulation. The proposals fit into three categories:

• Reduce red tape
• Support the well-being of the industry
• Protect farmers, consumers, markets and the environment

Feedback on the costs and benefits of the proposed policy decisions is also welcome, the CFIA said.

The online consultations are open to any interested parties, including industry members and the general public. They close Feb. 5.

The agency said it will report results of the consultation early in 2026. It will then seek targeted input from stakeholders before publishing draft regulatory amendments in the Canada Gazette.

The post CFIA looks for feedback on proposed seed potato rule changes appeared first on Country Guide.

A new analysis of 450 genomes from cultivated potatoes and 56 genomes of wild potato species has revealed that the potato lineage originated through natural interbreeding between a wild tomato plant and a potato-like species in South America about 9 million years ago.

This hybridization event led to the appearance of the nascent potato plant’s tuber, an enlarged structure housing nutrients underground, according to the researchers, who also identified two crucial genes involved in tuber formation. Whereas in a tomato plant the edible part is the fruit, in the potato plant it is the tuber.

“Potatoes are truly one of humanity’s most remarkable food staples, combining extraordinary versatility, nutritional value and cultural ubiquity in ways few crops can match,” said Sanwen Huang, a genome biologist and plant breeder at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and senior author of the study published on Friday in the journal Cell.

“People eat potatoes using virtually every cooking method – baking, roasting, boiling, steaming and frying. Despite being stereotyped as carbohydrates, potatoes offer vitamin C, potassium, fiber and resistant starch, and are naturally gluten-free, low-fat and satiating – a nutrient-dense calorie source,” Huang added.

Resistant starch is a type of carbohydrate that resists digestion in the small intestine and ferments in the large intestine, feeding beneficial bacteria in the gut.

Etuberosum to Solanum tuberosum

The modern-day potato plant’s scientific name is Solanum tuberosum. Its two parents identified in the study were plants that were the ancestors of a potato-like species now found in Peru named Etuberosum, which closely resembles the potato plant but lacks a tuber, and the tomato plant.

These two plants themselves shared a common ancestor that lived about 14 million years ago, and were able to naturally interbreed when the fortuitous hybridization event occurred five million years after they had diverged from each other.

“This event led to a reshuffling of genes such that the new lineage produced tubers, allowing these plants to expand into the newly created cold, dry habitats in the rising Andes mountain chain,” said botanist Sandra Knapp of the Natural History Museum in London, a co-author of the study.

This hybridization event coincided with the rapid uplift of the Andes. With a tuber, the potato plant was able to adapt to the changing regional environment and thrive in the harsh conditions of the mountains.

“Tubers can store nutrients for cold adaptation, and enable asexual reproduction to meet the challenge of the reduced fertility in cold conditions. These allowed the plant to survive and rapidly expand,” Huang said.

Study may improve potato breeding

The study’s findings, according to the researchers, may help guide improved cultivated potato breeding to address environmental challenges that crops presently face due to factors such as climate change.

There currently are roughly 5,000 potato varieties. The potato is the world’s third most important food crop, after rice and wheat, for human consumption, according to the Peru-based International Potato Center research organization. China is the world’s leading potato producer.

“It always is hard to remove all the deleterious mutations in potato genomes in breeding, and this study opens a new door to make a potato free of deleterious mutations using the tomato as the chassis of synthetic biology,” Huang said.

The study also may open the door to generate a new crop species that could produce tomato fruit above ground and potato tubers below ground, according to Zhiyang Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The potato and tomato are members of the nightshade family of flowering plants that also includes tobacco and peppers, among others. The study did not investigate the evolutionary origins of other tuberous root crops that originated in South America such as the sweet potato and yuca, which are members of different families of flowering plants.

While the parts of the tomato and potato plants that people eat are quite different, the plants themselves are very similar.

“We use different parts of these two species, fruits in tomatoes and tubers in potatoes,” Knapp said. “If you look at the flowers or leaves, these are very similar. And if you are lucky enough to let your potato plant produce fruits, they look just like little green tomatoes. But don’t eat them. They are not very nice.”

The post Evolutionary origins of the potato revealed – and a tomato was involved appeared first on Country Guide.

The report added, “crop development remains ahead of typical seasonal progress.”

Among Alberta’s cereals, its winter crops were faring the best at 68 per cent good to excellent for fall rye and 62 per cent for winter wheat. The spring cereals were led by durum at 56 per cent good to excellent, followed by spring wheat, barley and oats at 51 per cent.

Canola lagged behind the other oilseeds at 45 per cent good to excellent, with mustard at 67 per cent and flax at 60 per cent.

As for the pulses, lentils were rated at 62 per cent good to excellent, followed by chickpeas at 55 per cent and dry peas at 52 per cent.

Also, mixed grains were pegged at 75 per cent good to excellent and potatoes at 99 per cent.

Alberta Agriculture said crop spraying was two-thirds complete, well ahead of the five-year average of 49 per cent.

The province’s surface soil moisture levels of 37 per cent good to excellent continued to lag behind the five-year average of 65 per cent.

However, there were significant improvements in the good to excellent ratings from the previous week.

• Northwest 50 per cent, up 16 points
• Peace 46 per cent, up 21 points
• Central 41 per cent, up 25 points
• Northeast 40 per cent, up 23 points
• South 25 per cent, up six points.

That also generated improvements in the subsurface soil levels.

• Peace 54 per cent, up 17 points
• Northwest 50 per cent, up 18 points
• Central 42 per cent, up seven points
• Northeast 35 per cent, up 18 points
• South 26 per cent, up seven points

The post Alberta crops 21 points below average but soil moisture improving appeared first on Country Guide.

In that way, 10 years can seem like a lot of time. Yet in others, such as when managing a busy farm, it can pass in the blink of an eye.

And that decade is certainly filled with vast knowledge acquisition, unexpected surprises and important insights. To capture some of those experiences and advice, Country Guide asked a few farmers from across Canada to share the biggest lessons learned during their first 10 years in agriculture.

Lesson: Diversify

In 2014, Rebecca Papadopoulos and her husband George purchased Keating Farm, one of the oldest farms on Vancouver Island, with a goal of building a diversified farm. Although the property needed serious TLC, it had a lot of the infrastructure the couple needed to start farming.

“We had orchards that were already here,” says Papadopoulos. “It was pretty amazing to buy a piece of property and our first year here, we were harvesting apples and pears.”

During four years of extensive renovation on the 28-acre farm, Papadopoulos used the available resources to begin generating sales and focused on executing a long-term plan. Keating Farm started selling pressed juices made from the fruit growing in the established orchards and expanded into eggs, honey, turkey, chicken, pork and lamb in 2018. The farm is also an agritourism destination and offers lodging for overnight visitors.

A “farm angel” mentored the engineering project manager and paramedic turned farmers on how to raise livestock and develop products for the farm. A diversified approach helped Keating Farm overcome significant obstacles with individual crops, including storms that had an impact on their apple harvest and pests that decimated their beehives.

“Things that are very much outside of our control happen every year,” Papadopoulos says. “Every time something like that happens, I think, ‘I’m glad I’m not just a honey farmer because this year we would have been done,’ or ‘I’m glad I’m not just an apple farmer because we would be (in trouble).’ So, it’s really made me a strong believer in diversification.”

Diversification has also been essential in making the Keating Farm financially viable. Individually, none of the products that the couple produce generate enough revenue to run the farm. Expanding into multiple product lines and adding agritourism have been essential to their continued survival.

“Agritourism has actually been our absolute best possible marketing tool,” says Papadopoulos. “It turned out to be the best possible marketing strategy for direct-to-consumer sales.”

But diversification comes with challenges and Papadopoulos has spent the past decade learning to navigate them. Regulatory hurdles have been the hardest to overcome.

“Every product that we raise has its own set of regulations associated with it,” she says. “For diversified farmers like us with eight or nine products, I have to go out and familiarize myself with the set of regulations for every one of those products.”

Now that the farming operation is “dialed in,” Papadopoulos wants to help other farmers create diversified, sustainable farms, explaining, “There are a lot of great opportunities for collaborative workshops… and to share our knowledge.”

Lesson: Invest in the future

Morgan Smallman joined the family farm full-time in 2014 and quickly realized there were generational differences when it came to farm planning.

“I was 28 years old and pretty excited about everything and I wanted to expand,” Smallman recalls. “My father and my uncle are at the end of their farming career, so they’re thinking about an exit strategy, where I want to farm 20 years and make it profitable. It’s an interesting dynamic to be to be working in… because there are three of us and if we’re making decisions, everybody has to be on board.”

Smallman took part in a farm transition workshop offered through Farm Management Canada that helped the family come up with a plan and honed their communication skills. He calls it “the best decision we ever made as a farm.” Now, he meets with his dad and uncle once a week to talk through farm issues and ensures the lines of communication remain open during the transition.

The process helped Smallman advocate for changes he felt were important, including investing in new technology to make the Ola, P.E.I. potato farm more efficient and profitable. He had the experience to back up his plan.

The sixth-generation farmer graduated with a double minor in business and plant science and worked in crop insurance, GPS sampling and soil health before moving back home join J and J Farms.

Smallman helped the farm expand from 200 acres of potatoes to 500 acres. He was also part of the decision to scale back the acreage after recognizing it wasn’t feasible to farm on such a large scale with older equipment and older workers.

He’s focused on improving soil health and upgrading technologies to include a GPS-enabled tractor and new potato washer. “It’s taken the farm to the next level being able to work with these tools that are out there.”

Along the way, Smallman has dealt with challenges from hurricanes to potato wart to COVID. The struggles have solidified his commitment to embracing sustainable farming strategies, such as cover crops and slow-release fertilizer. He has plans to make additional investments over the next decade, including installing solar panels and selling power back to the grid.

These initiatives require upfront investments, but Smallman hopes they will offer significant long-term dividends — and could help expand their contracts with companies, such as Frito Lay, that have encouraged their growers to use green energy and other sustainable efforts.

“I want to be the early adopter on those environmental issues,” he says. “We’ve seen that it has an effect and that we’ll be incentivized to do it and I think it’s a good way to keep moving forward.”

Lesson: Be prepared to pivot

First-generation farmer Amber Rowse-Robinson was so excited about raising livestock on her East Sooke, B.C. farm that she introduced chickens, ducks and goats in the first year. Her plan was to farm as a hobby, not a business, but strong interest in her pastured meat led Rowse-Robinson to pivot.

“We started opening up sales just to friends and family. I realized that it was an amazing privilege to be able to feed people food that they really valued and felt like they had a connection with,” she recalls. “And that’s what really spurred the business on. I realized, ‘If I could do this on a bigger scale, that would be pretty great.’”

Brass Bell Farm has gone through significant changes since Rowse-Robinson started farming in 2009. She expanded the farm to include cattle and the demand for grass-fed beef on the island was strong. The farm developed a unique niche, but everything changed when a 2023 drought fried their pastures and made it impossible to purchase hay. Rowse-Robinson made the decision to sell the cattle.

“What it would have cost to bring in feed to keep them going was not in our budget and was not going to make sense from a business perspective,” she says. “I made the really hard decision of letting them go.”

Rowse-Robinson shifted her focus to sheep. While there had been a few ewes on the farm since the beginning, she recognized that sheep were well-suited to the climate and easier to sustain during drought. Sheep were also easier for Rowse-Robinson, who farms mostly solo with occasional help from her husband, to manage on her own. The fact that there were multiple revenue streams from a single flock was also attractive.

Brass Bell Farm purchased a flock in 2024, and Rowse-Robinson plans to establish a dairy, sell lambs to local farms and restaurants, and, eventually, market the fibre. The shift, she acknowledges, was difficult, but also exciting.

“Pivoting from the focus on beef to sheep was fairly significant,” she says. “In the moment it felt awful… I’d made all this progress and a lot of sacrifices over the years to build up what we had and then I saw it all driving away in the back of a trailer. Once I had my time to be heartbroken, I was ready to tackle the next thing.”

Her 15 years of experience has included a lot of trial and error, but Rowse-Robinson feels more confident in planning for the next decade.

“We probably have a clear idea of what we want to do and how we’re going to do it,” she says. “And if we can make these systems viable, we can support new and young farmers to get their start.”

Lesson: Never stop learning

Jim Lavers got the idea to grow Christmas trees from a tree farming friend in Nova Scotia who wanted to expand in Ontario. After researching the local market, he realized that many local Christmas tree farms had gone out of business and decided to fill the gap by starting the Christmas Tree Farm. There was just one problem: Lavers and his wife, Deni, spent their entire careers in the military and had no experience in agriculture.

“The learning curve was quite steep,” he recalls. “We joined the Christmas Tree Farmers of Ontario before we even bought a farm and spent the next two years basically learning everything we could.”

Taking a tactical approach to farming served Lavers well. He attended association meetings and field days, took business planning classes and met with mentors before the first saplings were planted at their Harrowsmith, Ont. farm in 2012.

Growing Christmas trees has proven challenging. Lavers has dealt with poor soil depth, gypsy moth infestations and climate change. A 2016 drought wiped out 2,500 trees — more than half of his plantings — and made him question whether to continue farming.

“It was really eye-opening for us,” he says.

The support of mentors and advice from other growers led to the decision to install an irrigation system that helped them get back on track. Even at peak production, the Christmas Tree Farm can’t meet the demand for locally grown Christmas trees.

The farm sold 1,750 trees in 2024, including 600 trees cut fresh from the farm with the rest shipped in from other growers. Tourism is a huge element of their business and the “Hallmark experience” draws thousands of visitors around the holidays.

Although Lavers has run a successful Christmas tree farm for more than 10 years, he still looks for opportunities to learn new things. He participates in association meetings and workshops, attends field days and reads about the latest agritourism trends.

Lavers is also eager to share his knowledge with the next generation of growers. He shares his contact information with new members of Christmas Tree Farmers of Ontario and has invited potential growers to the farm to get more information. Growing Christmas trees is a long game, he explains, and he wants to make sure that potential farmers have the information they need to make smart decisions.

“You have to learn your discipline before you start. You absolutely cannot walk onto a farm and expect to start raising Christmas trees without getting the required background,” he says.

“We’re always open for people interested in doing a like-minded thing to learn from us.”

The post Ten years on the farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Potato wart is soil-borne fungus that can reduce potato yield and quality. In 2021 and 2022, exports of potatoes were restricted from Prince Edward Island after the disease was found in some fields.

The response plan outlines protocols for when potato wart is detected in Canada (except for Newfoundland and Labrador).

New measures in the plan include requirements for users of restricted fields to implement preventative control plans and additional soil sampling and analysis requirements for restricted fields, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said in a Thursday news release.

Seed potato certification will no longer be available for seed potatoes grown in restricted fields, as these pose significant risks for spreading the disease.

The CFIA developed the plan in consultation with groups like the Canadian Potato Council, the Prince Edward Island Potato Board, and the P.E.I. provincial government.

The CFIA said it met with growers in P.E.I. to discuss the new plan and the transition for users of currently restricted fields, which will continue to be restricted under the new plan.

The National Potato Wart Response Plan replaces the Potato Wart Domestic Long-term Management Plan, enacted in 2009.

The 2024 National Potato Wart Survey turned up no cases of the disease in Canada. The survey analyzed soil samples from fields across the country that had no previous associations with known potato wart cases.

The post New national potato wart plan in place for 2025 growing season appeared first on Country Guide.

This marks the third consecutive year the survey did not detect disease, though the 2022 survey did not include fields in Prince Edward Island, which struggled with the disease that year.

The 2024 survey analyzed more than 2200 samples collected from seed potato fields in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Samples came from fields with no association with previous potato wart cases, the CFIA said in a news release.

The survey monitors for the presence of potato wart, and provides data to help verify that control measures are working.

Detection of potato wart in P.E.I in 2021 and 2022 led to export restrictions and mitigation orders.

The federal government has been working on a potato wart response plan, which the CFIA said would soon be implemented. The order will include improved risk mitigation measures like enhanced biosecurity, soil sampling and analysis.

The post CFIA’s 2024 potato wart survey comes back clean appeared first on Country Guide.

To date, the Canadian Potato Council, the Prince Edward Island Potato Board, the Province of PEI, and other stakeholders have been involved throughout the development of the new response plan, the CFIA said in a news release yesterday.

Recommendations from the International Advisory Panel on Potato Wart and input from previous consultations have also been  incorporated.

The plan will be one of several complementary processes used by the CFIA to help manage potato wart and prevent its spread alongside measures like a national potato wart survey and phytosanitary export certification procedures, the CFIA said.

The final plan will replace the current Potato Wart Domestic Long Term Management Plan, and will apply to new detections of potato wart anywhere in Canada other than Newfoundland and Labrador.

The consultation closes January 6, 2025.

In late 2021, two processing potato fields on the island were confirmed infected with potato wart.

On U.S. trade concerns, the federal government shut down fresh potato exports from the province. Most trade resumed in April 2022.

The 2021 cases were followed by confirmations in February, July and December of 2022, bringing in export restrictions and mitigation orders.

The most recent national potato wart survey found no cases of the disease.

The post Potato growers’ feedback wanted in final response plan consultation appeared first on Country Guide.

The south, central and Peace regions of Alberta wrapped up their harvests, while the northeast and northwest reached 97 per cent done.

The province’s sugar beets were 90 per cent harvested, the least advanced of the crops left to finish. Oats were next at 97 per cent completed, followed by canola at 98, then spring wheat, barley and flax at 99.

Average spring wheat yields came in at 44.7 bushels per acre provincewide, ranging from a low of 39.5 in the south to a high of 50.8 in the northwest. Barley gleaned 57.2 bu./ac. with a low of 52.6 in the central region to a high of 69 in the northwest. Oat yields were 67.9 bu./ac. overall, with the least in the south at 48.8 and the most in the northwest at 79.4.

Canola averaged 33.3 bu./ac. across Alberta, with the south at 27.1 and the northwest at 38.6. For dry peas, yields came in at 35.3 bu./ac. provincially, with the south at 34.3 and the Peace region at 38.4.

Surface soil moisture levels remained an issue at 41 per cent good to excellent, slipping four points from the previous week. Regionally, the south lost five points at 50 per cent good to excellent, the northeast was down three points at 24 per cent, and the northwest shed one point at 30 per cent. On the plus side, the south added five points at 43 per cent good to excellent, and the Peace gained six at 93 per cent.

As fieldwork continued, the fall-seeded crops were rated at 53 per cent good to excellent provincewide, 11 points below the five-year average. Pastures in Alberta dipped one point to 33 per cent good to excellent, two above the five-year average.

The post Alberta harvest wraps up appeared first on Country Guide.

It was 1996. Incredibly, the pair dug that first acre by hand. They even washed the baby spuds in a bathtub before taking test packs to some select restaurants and local delis, where they gave the samples to the deli owners for free just so they could get their feedback.

Overnight, van der Schaaf and Santiago knew they were on to a winner. And before the year was out, they had proof in the shape of an order from a single Alberta retailer who wanted their entire supply.

They were on a roll. By 1998, The Little Potato Company had a staff of 30 and shelf space in supermarkets all across Western Canada.

Santiago, who would soon take over as CEO, felt like they were sitting on a powder keg, facing a new “how do we ramp this thing up” question almost every day.

And that’s just what they did. Today, the Little Potato Company is North America’s number one brand in the sector called creamer potatoes with 14,000 acres of contracted crop, 400 employees, and four plants, including a 95,000-square-foot facility in Edmonton.

Now the company is outgrowing that building too and construction is underway on an additional site built with sustainability in mind, i.e. solar panels that cover the roof and will generate almost enough power for year-round use, plus cutting-edge water conservation technology.

But there’s another side of the story because all through that growth process, van der Schaaf and Santiago had begun asking themselves a series of other questions as well, which turned out to be a very good thing and as important to the company’s future success as the little-potato concept itself.

Today, it’s Santiago’s advice to any new startup and especially for any farmer on the trail of a potentially big idea. The recommendation is clear: get strategic with your business thinking right from the start.

Don’t wait for threats. Don’t wait for the first competitor to come hunting for a slice of your market, or for a retailer to wonder if maybe you’re just a proverbial flash in the pan after all.

The benefits of getting strategic go way beyond the merely reactive. In fact, says Santiago, strategy is the key to your being able to flex your entrepreneurial muscles in the first place.

If that just sounds like biz speak, though, hold on. some of Santiago’s advice is flat-out surprising.

Below are seven key takeaways she has learned along the way, matched with the management insights they produced:

1. Know that your life is going to change.

In the beginning, Santiago knew every detail of the business, from the field to the customer’s stove top, and she leveraged that knowledge. But it had to change. On a personal note, Santiago reflects on how her life has changed from the early days of the company, “In the beginning, you’re doing a little bit of everything. I’ve learned as I’ve grown to find people that are way better at something than me and I can trust to actually lead …”

Her personal focus has shifted from the small details for the company to the overarching values and culture of Little Potato, and how this is having an impact on the work flow as a whole.

2. Know your objective.

For the Little Potato Co., the goal was to build a level of retailer and consumer preference that would see their trendy new product grow into a more stable mainstream business. But Santiago also learned another, more counterintuitive lesson. That’s to take things slow, one step at a time.

There was a point when the company tried to meet every consumer’s expectations, Santiago says, and this was an impossible thing to do.

She also learned it’s vital to understand and focus on what the business is doing well instead of diverting resources into every flashy new idea. Be deliberate, she says. Stay focused. Don’t get into the game of responding to every trade rumour.

3. Build resilience.

“Things often don’t work out the way you think they will,” says Santiago, who then adds, more directly, “Often they don’t work out.”

What works, she’s found, is to grow your resilience. Pay attention to it. Figure out what helps you bounce back and what doesn’t.

As well, listen to what the consumer wants. That will help you create stability by staying in tune with the market. That means it’s important to learn how to keep in touch, including but not only through social media.

And also learn how and when to articulate your purpose and your values. “That’s a thing people can grasp onto when there’s a challenging situation or a challenging year,” says Santiago.

4. Focus on HR.

Part of growth is learning how to encourage people to do what is asked of them, and then letting them take the initiative without having heavy-handed control over everything.

After being in business over two decades, Santiago says “It’s the retention and the continuous engagement of the team that’s really going to make it happen.” The two — retention and engagement — are separate, but tightly linked.

A business also needs to excel at recruiting, she says. “At this stage, that is the absolute key” and it is essential for keeping the business moving forward.

5. Build great relationships.

One thing Santiago has noticed: the importance of relationships, with growers, packers, shippers and customers doesn’t change.

Santiago sees continued success coming from the good relationships Little Potato has developed with its end-customers, yet it doesn’t start and stop there. Adopting and using key performance indicators to ensure you can manage how well the company is following through on all of its promises is always of utmost importance. 

6. Take the right risks.

As Santiago looks back at Little Potato’s launch years, another lesson that stands out is that being too cautious stands in the way of growth. Here’s why. In Little Potato’s case, taking more risks with new products would have been beneficial because it has turned out being wrong can be a great lesson. Marketing flops can be vital ways of learning.

7. Get great advice on your management style.

Santiago adheres to the Rockefeller Habits system and frequently mentions it in our conversation. It’s a century-old system that John D. Rockefeller perfected as his personal path to becoming the richest person in American history.

At Little Potato Co., it has helped Santiago identify her primary goal as keeping her team laser-focused on what really needs to get done and not get sidetracked by tasks of less importance.

“With the Rockefeller Habits, we break it down into three-year priorities and annual goals,” she says.

Key areas of focus include nuts and bolts issues like shipping but also product development. People development is always a priority too, whether it’s recruiting or developing leadership within the company.

Connection to their customers and getting them to purchase their little potatoes more frequently continues to be top of mind too, as does keeping store shelves supplied with top-quality product.

In order to remain as sustainable as they can, Little Potato requires their farmers centred in five provinces, as well as Wisconsin, and Washington, to follow sound production practices such as three or more years of crop rotations as well as using green manure cover crops. By 2025, the company’s growers will all be certified for integrated pest management, too, and the company is committed to preserving and restoring up to three per cent of their productive land for wildlife and soil conservation.

Little Potato strives to build multi-generational relationships with its growers, since family is one of the strongest overarching values of the company as a whole. It is also very good at what it does. The company produces proprietary potato varieties and also has dedicated seed potato growers in central Alberta who work under exclusive contract for them.

Sandford Gleddie, executive VP sales, marketing and business development at Little Potato, has seen the growth and expansion of the company’s brand for over a decade. From the company’s earliest days selling only to restaurants, Gleddie has seen expansion into mainstream grocery stores and onto household tables.

As Gleddie explains, there were “… a lot of years of slow growth, initially starting in food service and selling to hotel restaurants. Then in Canada, Safeway was our first retail customer. About 10 years or 12 years ago we started entering the U.S. market and our growth really took off …”

Once the company got its foot in the door of the grocery retail sphere, Gleddie and his marketing team took up the task of serious brand building. They identified core brand strengths like their potatoes’ nutritional value, and they also went to work on key differentiators, like the fact that small potatoes are quick to bake, boil or pan fry, which makes them convenient for busy families,

Crucially, they also decided where to put their focus, i.e. on their flavour advantage, and Gleddie’s marketing team has continued to focus on the potatoes’ favour as one of their main market drivers.

Branding drives other parts of the business too, like potato variety development. New lines are assessed for myriad traits, but one is paramount. “Our primary selection is for sensory traits,” Gleddie says. “We’re looking for potatoes that taste great.”

Now with packaging facilities in Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Wisconsin, Little Potato has easy access to most mainstream grocery markets in North America, but they also focus on keeping the produce looking great while on display.

“We get a ton of brand builds on-shelf in stores,” Gleddie says. “We put a lot of effort and thought into our package design so that we get a real billboard effect on the shelf and we get a lot of views.”

Overall North American potato consumption has been dropping for the last 40 years, and Gleddie puts serious time into setting actionable and measurable targets for breaking that pattern for Little Potato. “A lot of it is around finding and targeting the right group of consumers and then effectively getting our messaging to those consumers,” Gleddie says.

Using social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, Little Potato has had huge success connecting with customers. Gleddie adds. “Most advertising these days is consumer-driven that is also done via social media. That’s where we focus a lot of our dollars and efforts.” Little Potato has established their website and email newsletters as a hub for new recipes, nutritional and storage information and even as a gateway to meet a few of the farmers who grow their products. 

To know what the customers want and to learn of new opportunities, Gleddie and his team make extensive use of market surveys, “… so we’ll do anything from panels of consumers that submit information and data to actually doing online or virtual consumer surveys and formal market research,” he states.

Again, those learnings get used by the entire company. Says Gleddie: “Once they see us on social media and they want to try and buy us, they have to be able to find us easily. We have to make sure we’re on the right shelf.”

Santiago sees an extension of herself in that management approach.

Looking back on the company’s early days and at her role in them, she says, she thinks she brought not only the right skills, but the right attitude too.

Mainly, she says, what she did right was not to give up.

She leaves the interview, though, with a last bit of advice. It’s advice she wishes she had taken herself. Speaking of her leadership journey and of her work making Little Potato a great place for great people to work, Santiago reflects that she could have extended the same grace to herself that she did for others: “I would have enjoyed the journey more if I would have learned earlier to not be so hard on myself.”

– This article was originally published in the December 2023 issue of Country Guide.

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