From white-linen tablecloth restaurants to a local burger joint, potatoes for food service make up an estimated 55% of all potato crops sold in the US.<br />But according to Business Insider, American farmers are now stuck with billions of pounds of potatoes they can't sell--or easily dispose of.<br />The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of hundreds of thousands of restaurants and other cooked food outlets.<br />That meant potato orders to farmers virtually stopped, leading farms across the country with piles of rotting produce.<br />In Idaho, for example, the going rate for a sack of potatoes has gone from $12 to $3--and it takes a rate of at least $5 a sack for most farmers to break even.<br />All in all, an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of potatoes are trapped in the supply chain across the US.
