More than 56,000 MT of chipping potatoes worth USD26m were shipped to Japan between July 2021 and June 2022. These sales represent a 75% increase in volume and a 73% increase in dollar value over the same time last year.

“The U.S. remains the only market that can supply the Japanese chipping potato industry. Exports to Japan are so substantial that Japan has become the largest export market for U.S. fresh potatoes in Asia and the third largest export market for fresh potatoes globally – behind Canada and Mexico,” according to a recent Potatoes USA report.

The USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) collaborated with the US potato industry and Japanese potato chip manufacturers to achieve this outcome. Together, they have created a major new market for US chipping potatoes, and Potatoes USA continues to work to stimulate commercial purchases and increase US market share.

“The U.S. potato industry thanks USDA for its assistance with this effort and now wishes to turn its attention to the bigger goal of opening the Japanese market for fresh U.S. table-stock potatoes, which would result in hundreds of millions of dollars of additional potato exports to the market,” the Potatoes USA’s representatives wrote.

The U.S. first made its fresh-cutting potatoes available in Japan in 2006. Since the end of World War II, American-grown potatoes have not been able to be shipped to Japan to make potato chips.

“Although the market opening was significant and welcomed, it came with restrictions. Chipping potatoes had to be processed, could only be imported to a single factory in Hiroshima, and could only enter from February to July. As the program continued, adjustments and expansions were made. A second factory was approved to import U.S. chipping potatoes in the early 2010s, and transport of the potatoes on land to that Japanese factory was approved as well,” the document concludes.