Sweet potato production is a $79.5 million industry in Louisiana, according to the LSU AgCenter’s 2012 “Louisiana Summary: Agriculture and Natural Resources.” Nearly 10,000 acres were farmed for sweet potatoes in 2012, with most growers located in three main clusters throughout the state in West Carroll, Avoyelles and St. Landry parishes.
Director of the School of Plant, Environmental and Soil Sciences Don La Bonte is a sweet potato breeder who focuses his research on the development of new varieties that respond to the industry’s demands. While La Bonte works with sweet potatoes yearround, Thanksgiving is a time when sweet potatoes make a special appearance on many people’s tables.
Here are 10 facts La Bonte shared about sweet potatoes:
FACTS
1. Sweet potato acreage has declined in the past few years in Louisiana due to hurricanes as well as competition from crops that are more profitable for farmers to grow, such as corn.
2. Sweet potatoes are expensive to grow. Even though most sweet potato varieties have a high yield, growing one acre can cost as much as $4,000 plus labor and infrastructure costs.
3. The leading sweet potato producing state in the U.S. is North Carolina, where weather patterns have been favorable in recent years and tobacco — of which the state traditionally was a top grower — acreage has been scaled back. There are fewer crop options in North Carolina than in Louisiana, so because sweet potatoes grow well in North Carolina, many farmers made the swtich.
4. The most common variety of sweet potatoes grown in Louisiana today is the Beauregard, which was developed by LSU AgCenter scientists in the late 1980s. It became popular with farmers because it has a high yield and produces a good quality potato. New varieties such as the Orleans may overtake it, however. The Orleans, also developed by the AgCenter, looks and tastes just like the Beauregard but has a better, more uniform shape and a slightly higher yield.
5. Commerical producers such as ConAgra Foods, which opened a sweet potato French fry plant in Delhi, La., three years ago, have different needs than fresh market sellers. The AgCenter recently developed a variety just for ConAgra that ConAgra licenses to growers, who then sell the potatoes to ConAgra.
6. The AgCenter is working on a starchy, orange fleshed variety of sweet potatoes for growers in Africa, who prefer blander sweet potatoes. Having the orange flesh is important because that means higher beta carotene content, which is a key nutrient.
7. Sweet potatoes are the fourth most important crop grown in tropical areas such as Uganda. The top sweet potato producing country in the world is China, where they are used in animal food.
8. Ninety-five percent of sweet potatoes grown in the world have white flesh. The U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Japan are the only countries that primarily consume orange-fleshed varieties.
9. Americans’ sweet potato consumption has increased by one third in the past 10 years because people began realizing sweet potatoes are a healthy food. Demand has also risen in Europe, where sweet potatoes are a novelty that people are beginning to incorporate into cuisines.
10. Sweet potato growers have become increasingly interested in producing unique varieties, such as the Bonita, a white-fleshed potato with a flaky texture that La Bonte said people either love or hate, and the Japanese variety, which has white flesh and purple skin.

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Charles Champagne

Smithfield Half Hams are put out Monday, Nov. 25, 2013 at Highland Nieghborhood WalMart in preparation for Thanksgiving.