Reference
Glossary
The terms the brief uses, defined the way the fresh potato trade says them.
- Free on Board (FOB)
- The price quoted at the shipping point, before freight to the buyer's dock. The core price this brief reports, always paired with a pack ("mostly $11.00-12.00, 50 lb carton"), never a bare number.
- Shipping point
- The packing shed or district where potatoes are packed and loaded, and the location an FOB price is quoted from. Distinct from a terminal market, where potatoes are priced after they have already shipped in.
- Mostly
- The USDA qualifier marking the price range within which most of the day's actual sales happened, narrower than the full low-high range published alongside it. We quote mostly wherever USDA publishes it, never a synthetic single number.
- Carton count
- The size grade on a 50 lb russet carton, quoted as the number of potatoes that fill it: a 40-count carton holds forty large potatoes, a 100-count holds a hundred small ones. Lower count means a bigger potato, and the big counts carry a premium. One district can quote every count from 40 to 100 on the same day.
- Hundredweight (cwt)
- One hundred pounds, the standard unit the potato trade measures both price and volume in. Because packs are priced on different bases (a 50 lb carton per package, a bulk tote per cwt), this site normalizes every FOB price to a per-cwt figure so a carton, a sack and a baled bag compare on one board.
- Size A / Size B
- The size grade on round reds, whites and yellows, the counterpart of the carton count on russets. Size A is the larger table size, Size B the smaller, with specialty sizes (Creamers, Chef, 2 inch minimum) quoted alongside. Size is distinct from pack and from grade.
- US No. 1 / US No. 2
- The two USDA grade standards this market quotes. US No. 1 covers well shaped, sound tablestock; US No. 2 is a lower standard that a rough storage year pushes more of the crop into. Ungraded lots are marked N/A. US No. 2 is far more common in potatoes than in most fresh crops.
- Grade-out
- The share of a lot that fails to make the target grade, culled to a lower grade or to process. A high grade-out tightens the supply of No. 1 tablestock and widens the No. 1 to No. 2 spread, which is why grade-out rises as a storage crop ages.
- Field run
- Potatoes sold ungraded and unsized, straight from the field or the cellar with no packing line sort. A field run price is not comparable to a graded carton price, so we key it as its own series rather than folding it into a graded one.
- Storage crop and cellar
- Potatoes cured after a fall harvest and held in a cellar for sale through the winter and into summer, rather than sold fresh off the field. Idaho, the Columbia Basin and the San Luis Valley are storage regions; their cellars carry the market from autumn until the new southern crop opens.
- Norkotah and Burbank
- The two russet cultivars the market quotes separately. Russet Norkotah is the volume cultivar; Russet Burbank, the classic bake and process type, usually carries a premium. One district can quote both the same day at different prices, so each keeps its own price series.
- Cartons, sacks and baled bags
- The standard wholesale pack formats. A carton is a 50 lb corrugated box, the count-graded russet pack. A sack is a 50 lb mesh or poly bag. A baled bag is a master of small retail bags, ten 5-lb or five 10-lb bags to a 50 lb master. A bulk tote runs about 2000 lb and is quoted per cwt. The same potatoes carry different prices by pack.
- Movement
- The volume of potatoes shipped, reported separately from price and quoted here in hundredweight the way the potato trade counts it. Movement rising while price falls, or the reverse, is a real supply and demand signal, not noise to ignore.
- Fresh market vs process
- The fresh market is the open, daily-priced tablestock arena this site reports. Most fry, chip and dehydration volume moves on contracts set before the season, at prices the fresh FOB does not set and does not see. The two can diverge, and this brief covers only the fresh side.
- Terminal market vs shipping point
- A terminal market is a wholesale market in a consuming city, pricing potatoes already shipped in. Shipping point is the origin district where the potatoes were packed and loaded. Terminal prices run higher than shipping point FOB, reflecting freight and handling.