Drought Concerns Linger As Growers Transplant Sweetpotatoes

Sweetpotatoes are typically transplanted, not planted from seed, and that transplant season is well underway, but there are some concerns. Michelle Grainger, Executive Director of the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission.

“A sweetpotato needs about 120 days of growth and production, which takes us through to Labor Day or beyond, depending on that staggering time of when it got transplanted," said Michelle Grainger, Executive Director of the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission. "So we're in that exciting time period where things are getting transplanted.”

However, Grainger said much of North Carolina, the nation’s leading sweetpotato producer, is experiencing extreme or even exceptional drought conditions.

“Sweetpotatoes haven't needed to be transplanted until about right now," Grainger said. "Typically, there's been a lot of other crops that have been planted prior to getting to the sweetpotato transplanting cycle on the calendar because of the drought that we've had. Our growers haven't necessarily been able to do that, so now all of a sudden they're log jammed, so to speak, as to trying to get all the crops into all the fields at the same.”

On a brighter note, Grainger said sweetpotato demand is high both domestically and internationally.

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