Abstract

Times have changed for Bud the Spud since Stompin’ Tom Connors wrote his famous song in 1969. Today, Bud’s truckloads of potatoes don’t always come from Charlottetown or Summerside on Prince Edward Island — more and more of them come from Western Canada — and they get shipped all over the world. Potatoes, especially processing potatoes, have become a major Canadian commodity; the 2002 crop had a total farm value of 978.0 million Canadian dollars.

The expansion of the industry is directly related to an international love affair with french fries. In the 1999 to 2000 crop year, Canada exported 637.3 million Canadian dollars worth of frozen fries and imported 18.1 million Canadian dollars worth, for a healthy trade surplus of 619.2 million dollars.