Potatoes are baked into Idaho brand
Carson Mccullough
(CN) — There’s few state-vegetable pairings quite like Idaho and potatoes.
Despite containing less than 1% of the U.S. population, the aptly named Potato State grows a third of the country’s potato crop.
Spuds have been a mainstay on state license plates since the 1920s. Aspiring politicians seek out photo-ops with the humble crop. Since 2012, the state’s capital of Boise has celebrated New Year not with a ball drop but by dropping — you guessed it — a synthetic 17-foot-long potato. The vegetable is, if you will, a baked-in part of the Idaho experience.
It’s perhaps little surprise, then, that there’s even an Idaho Potato Museum. Located in Blackfoot in the eastern part of the state, the museum explores all things spud-related and ends with an optional baked potato.
Museum director Tish Dahmen is a certified potato enthusiast. In an interview, she rattled off just a few of the foodstuffs that begin with the humble potato — from potato chips and French fries to vodka and “the old meat and potatoes.”
“It tastes good. It looks good. It is good,” Dahmen gushed of the spud. “People respond to it because they have connected to it.”
What’s with the potato's popularity? For starters, it’s cheap and accessible, available year-round and typically costing consumers less than 60 cents a pound.
Farmers flock to it for its yield. A typical potato farm can produce about 35,000 potatoes per acre, making it one the highest-yield crops on the planet and beating out other heavyweights like wheat and corn.
Spud boosters like Dahmen also note its nutritional content. “The potato contains just about everything you need to survive, except for Vitamin A and D, which you can get from the sun,” she said. “Or butter and sour cream,” two classic potato garnishes.
Like Georgia peaches and Wisconsin cheese, potatoes are part of Idaho’s branding. When native Idahoan and life coach Shannon McGuire decided to make a documentary about Idaho and its people, she could think of no better name for it than “POTATO.” (McGuire runs SupreME Moms, an organization dedicated to maternal self-care that also helped fund the movie.)
“This title was chosen for the film as a nod to our fame and a giggle towards the perception of Idaho as an unevolved state trapped in the olden days,” McGuire said. “We’re more than dirt roads and tubers. ‘POTATO’ showcases that loud and clear.”
In an interview, McGuire reflected on the close association many Americans have between Idaho and potatoes. Idaho is more than just spuds, she said — but those spuds still say something important about Idaho.
“It’s pretty simple — and simple can be a powerful thing,” she said. “Potatoes say that we are grounded and focused on what works, on what matters. We’re strong and resilient, connected to the land and able to nourish the people in our state and across the world.”
Idaho resident Erin Witherspoon is uniquely qualified to understand the state’s tuber devotion. A brand ambassador for the spud and an employee at the Idaho Potato Commission, she travels the country seven months of the year as part of the Famous Idaho Potato Tour, spreading the good word about spuds.
Instead of a tour bus or government-issued sedan, the Potato Tour’s vehicle of choice is a flatbed truck with an enormous potato sculpture in it. The original potato, 12 feet tall and weighing in at four tons, was retired around 2018 and is now a popular vacation rental near Boise.
Idahoans, Witherspoon said, have a special relationship with the potato.
“Even if you didn’t grow up near a potato farm, it still has such a reach,” she said. Take the ice cream potato, a Idaho fairground classic where vanilla ice cream is coated in a “skin” of cocoa powder and topped off with other garnishes to resemble a baked spud, like green sprinkles as a stand-in for chives.
Nowhere is that affinity more obvious than at the dinner table, she said. “You go to an Italian restaurant, and you get the side of mashed potatoes for the table,” she said. “We don’t notice it, but it’s such an integral part of your life growing up there.”
One need not visit potato museums or go on potato tours to understand Idahoans’ appreciation for their hallmark crop. During a recent visit to a fruit stand in Boise, a familiar sight stood out.
That sight, of course, was potatoes.
They occupied prime real estate at the fruit stand, sitting in a bin next to the cashier table and underneath a chalkboard drawing of a smiling spud. Asked about this, the cashier, a woman named A.J., laughed. “It’s Idaho, isn’t it?” she said. “It would be a crime not to have them.”