Are Sweet Potatoes Hot?
by Charles Walker

At The United States Sweet Potato Convention back in January (2010), Andy Johnston, Vice President of Marketing for Lamb Weston gave a very exciting PowerPoint presentation. One of the slides in his presentation was headlined by the statement that “Sweet Potatoes Are Hot!” Andy presented the data contained in Table 1 and this statement is supported by the increases in U.S. total production in recent years. For some 30 years, 1971 through 2002, U.S. production of sweet potatoes averaged about 1.250 billion pounds. Then, in 2003 production jumped by 24.2 percent, from 1.2799 billion to 1.5891 billion pounds. For the last three years, production has remained above 1.8 billion pounds, and in 2009, production exceeded 1.9 billion pounds. This made the 2009 crop the largest since 1955 when production was 2.1608 billion pounds. With the recent increases in both production and per capita consumption, it’s not a stretch to say that “ Sweet Potatoes Are Hot”

Table 1. Comparison of U.S. per capita consumption of white potatoes and sweet potatoes in 1998 and 2008, and percent change, and 2009 forecast of per capita consumption.