Thoughts for Food: Using WISDOM to Manage Potatoes and Preserve Our Environment

When we look back at the last thirty years of the potato industry in Central Wisconsin, we marvel at the advances growers have made and wonder how much further they can go! Major changes in practices, technologies, and tools—driven by engaged and innovative growers, working side by side with other growers and UW researchers—have occurred to solve challenging production and environmental issues.  This has enabled the industry to increase productivity by over 25% in the last decade alone.  Due to these advances, the acreage of the potato crop has been reduced from 84,000 to 61,000 acres; inputs like water, energy and pesticides have also been reduced, and yet we produce as many potatoes now (we rank 3^rd in the US) as we did a decade ago.