Cycling Over Sixty
Join us as we continue to follow the inspiring journey of Tom Butler, an average man in his 60s, who has found an invigorating path to fitness through the power of bicycling.
In Season One, Tom achieved his long-desired goal of completing the grueling 206-mile Seattle to Portland ride. He also discovered that his capacity for gaining strength and endurance was much higher than he anticipated for his age. However, despite Tom’s success, some key indicators of lifestyle diseases persisted.
Season Two steps up Tom's quest for improved overall fitness. Determined to make changes that will yield better results, he embarks on a fresh cycling challenge, pushing his boundaries even further. Along the way, we'll witness his trials and triumphs as he seeks to transform his health.
The podcast features insightful interviews with experts in exercise, nutrition, and various health topics. From seasoned cyclists to leading specialists, these guests offer valuable advice and guidance to Tom on his mission to achieve and sustain optimal fitness.
But it's not just about the physical aspects of cycling – the podcast also explores all things biking. Discussions range from bike mechanics and equipment to the broader impact of cycling on society and the environment.
Tom, wholeheartedly embracing cycling as the foundation of his fitness journey, shares his struggles and successes candidly. His infectious enthusiasm aims to inspire people approaching or over 60 to hop on a bike and discover their untapped potential for increased fitness.
If you're seeking motivation, expert insights, and a heartwarming story of perseverance, "Cycling Over Sixty" is for you. Listen in to this fitness expedition as we pedal towards better health and a stronger, fitter future!
Cycling Over Sixty
#PoweredByPotatoes
Host Tom Butler is gearing up for a both a dose of excitement and a little anxiety this weekend. He's set to embark on a Cascade Bicycle Club group ride with his wife, Kelly, for the first time. Join him as he shares his anticipation and nerves about her first group ride experience. Plus, with his cross-Washington ride looming, Tom provides an update on the wildfire situation and how it might significantly impact his journey.
Tom sits down with Chris Voigt, Director of the Washington Potato Commission, for a deep dive into the world of potatoes this week. Discover the incredible system behind bringing this staple food to our tables and learn about the #poweredbypotatoes campaign. Get ready to be amazed at the scale of potato production and inspired to support sustainable farming practices.
This episode is packed with insights, stories, and a healthy dose of potato knowledge. Don't miss it!
Link
Washington Grown Program: wagrown.com
Thanks for Joining Me! Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/
Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty
Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com
Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com
This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season two, episode 55, hashtag powered by potatoes, and I'm your host, tom Butler. Thank you for joining me for another episode where I talk to people who I believe will help me stay on track as I try to make some major improvements to my health. Before I get into this week's conversation, here's a brief update on my progress. If you're new to the podcast, I'm challenging myself this season to ride across the state of Washington. I'm less than a month away from heading out on this journey now, as I've been talking about the last few weeks, the route across Washington is being threatened by wildfires. The weather cooperated this week and it got cooler and there was some rain, so that's encouraging. However, the rain caused a mudslide that blocked the road that I want to ride in a few weeks. The road is state route 20 across the northern part of the state and, even worse, lightning from the rainstorm ignited another fire, so now I'm watching the Ruby Fire along with the Easy Fire, but I am still hopeful. They reported that the mudslide required they bring in heavy equipment to clean it up, so that indicates it was a pretty good size mudslide. That's not the best news, but at least they're working on it. And of course, an additional fire doesn't lessen my concern about air quality. If both those fires are still burning, it means a lot more smoke in that area and then also smoke drifting to the east along my route. I do like what the weather is looking like. However, it looks like there's going to be three days straight of rain and lower temperatures in the area of the fires. Crossing my fingers, that means less fire activity without lightning sparking any more new fires. Maybe it could even be raining during my ride. That would take care of the air quality concerns for sure.
Tom Butler:As part of the prep for the trip across Washington, I'm doing three days of riding this weekend. I'm riding the Cascade Bicycle Club Port Townsend Tour. The tour only covers 125 miles in three days, but it includes over 7,300 feet of elevation gain, so I see this as a good test to see how I can handle multiple days of decent climbing. I'm extra excited about this ride because my wife Kelly is joining me for the first time on a group ride. I am a little anxious. Also, while it is a small possibility, she could end up hating the experience and then I'd be super disappointed. One concern is that it looks like it's going to be pretty cool only up to the mid-60s and then also some rain for at least a couple of the ride days. We've spent the last few days getting Kelly set up with rain gear, but we won't have a chance to test the gear before we get out on the ride.
Tom Butler:If you're new here, kelly has only recently decided to join us in our cycling trips. We got her a cruise bike and it takes a bit to get used to. She doesn't feel completely comfortable yet riding with one hand for very long. We decided to rig the bike up with a water bladder rather than have her trying to get a bottle in and out of a bottle cage under her seat or behind her head. Unfortunately, they don't make a hydration pack anywhere close to how we need it designed, so it's going to take some messing with to make it work. Another problem we had to solve was how to get a bag on her rear rack. I love the Topeak MTX QuickTrek system, but none of their racks fit the cruise bike. I was excited to find that Topeak makes a slick adapter to put on any rack and then the bag can slide into the adapter. When I say any rack, it is any rack that is between 90 and 120 millimeters width. Unfortunately, I didn't read close enough to see that width, and when the adapter came I learned that Kelly's rack is wider than 120 millimeters. The truth is, I'm glad that I didn't see the width requirement, because I probably wouldn't have bought the adapter if I had, and while it didn't fit perfectly, it only took a few zip ties to make it, so the rack works great. I want to find a different solution in the future and get rid of the zip ties, but it will take a bit of fabrication to do that and it is certainly fine for now.
Tom Butler:I'm currently doing a training route that is specifically meant to challenge me so that I get stronger for climbing. Anything above around 4% grade really slows me down my hope that stressing my muscles climbing a 14% grade will stimulate my body to add muscle and also improve glucose transport into my muscles. I do that climb twice on a 33-mile route. I'm really happy that this week I set a new PR for the segment with the climb. My previous PR was 3 minutes and 7 seconds. I was able to set a new PR of 2 minutes and 49 seconds. I see that as a significant improvement. When I do the climb I'm hitting what I believe to be 95% of my max heart rate. I believe it will really improve my climbing strength by spending what ends up being a combined 5 minutes plus to do those two climbs at that intensity during my 33 mile route. To give a comparison between me and others, strava shows that the fastest riders do the segment in a minute and a half. If I look at men my age the top times are around two minutes and with people my weight I'm pretty close to what everybody else is doing. I would be thrilled to be able to do the segment in two minutes and 30 seconds, but I'm really not comparing myself to other people. The only reason that it's good that I will improve on that segment is that that improvement means that I have stronger leg muscles and that those muscles are better at consuming glucose. I do think this weekend will give me some indication about whether or not this route is improving my strength.
Tom Butler:I have always been a curious person. I think that helps me come up with questions for guests for the podcast. But if you listen to the podcast often, you might notice that I get tempted to veer off topic from time to time this week might seem a bit off topic at first, as I interview the director of the Washington Potato Commission, chris Voigt. At first, as I interview the director of the Washington Potato Commission, chris Voigt, hopefully by the end you will see why a podcast focused on staying healthy is asking a bunch of questions about agriculture. Here we go. I am joined today by Washington Potato Commission Executive Director, chris Voigt. Thank you, chris, for making the time to talk potatoes with me.
Chris Voigt:Hey, tom, that's my favorite thing to do is talk potatoes, so I'm glad to be on the program. Thanks for having me.
Tom Butler:Awesome. Now some listeners might be double checking their phones to see if they somehow switch podcasts, but in a minute here I will explain why I'm having someone from the Washington Potato Commission join me. I know it seems a little off topic. Chris, let me start off by having you talk about your role at the commission and what the commission hopes to accomplish.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, I kind of look at it as a three-legged stool that we do at the commission. So the commission is technically kind of a state agency but we get no money from the state. All we get is mandatory taxing authority for all the potato growers in the state. So all the potato growers kick in four cents for every 100 pounds of potatoes that they grow. We combine that all together it gives us roughly about a $3.8 million budget and we focus on three things.
Chris Voigt:Probably the biggest and most important thing is research. You know how do we grow more food using less resources, more nutritious food, so we spend a lot on potato research. Second is kind of government affairs. You know we're sort of the voice of the potato industry in Olympia and also Washington DC. We dabble in everything from transportation issues to export, trade, nutrition, farm bill research, all sorts of items within the public policy realm, and then kind of the third thing that we do is education or promotions.
Chris Voigt:About 90% of what we grow is more of an ingredient that's going to show up, you know, in McDonald's french fries or Scout potatoes or potato chips. So we don't focus a lot on branding but we do talk a lot about just agriculture in general, you know what it takes to produce food, and so we actually even have our own TV show that we help produce. It's called Washington Grown. It's not just about potatoes, it's about all the fine crops grown in Washington. But that's the three things we do, so research, government affairs and then also education research, government affairs and then also education.
Tom Butler:I'm sorry to say that this is the first time I've heard that there's a TV show called Washington Grown. Is that released on YouTube, or how does that get out there?
Chris Voigt:Yeah, well, you can catch it everywhere. Actually, I think Cairo, in the Seattle area, we've got it on the out of the Tacoma PBS station, which covers the entire west side, also Spokane. It's kind of an interesting program because we're both on commercial as well as public television and you can catch it on YouTube. We have our own YouTube channel and then wagrowncom is our website, so wagrowncom, and you can catch every episode there as well. As you know, google Washington grown or do a search out Washington grown on YouTube, and you can catch every episode there. Also, we call it a farming show disguised as a food show, but it talks about all the wonderful, great food products that are grown here in Washington and some of the fabulous chefs in Washington state that utilize it. And we just won our fourth Emmy award, and so we're pretty happy about that.
Tom Butler:That's awesome. Very early on, when I launched the podcast, I wanted to talk to someone from the Potato Commission, so here's the connection. After I started cycling, I was trying to get fit, I decided that it would be very motivational to do Cascade Bicycle Club's Seattle to Portland ride, and one of the sponsors I saw on the website was Washington Potatoes. So first of all, thank you for sponsoring STP.
Chris Voigt:Oh, it's one of our favorite events, especially for me both. Personally, I love that event. My staff loves that event. They love going there and representing Potatoes. It's just a great group of people. It's a wonderfully put together event. They love going there and representing potatoes. It's just a great group of people. It's a wonderfully put together event. I mean, it's just so well organized, and so we've been happy to be one of the sponsors of that event.
Tom Butler:Now have you ridden it, I have, I have.
Chris Voigt:I wanted. I didn't get a chance. I've done it a few times in the past since we've been sponsoring it, but I had a pretty serious skiing accident this past winter and broke my back and some ribs and so I've been kind of. I wasn't able to do it this year, but I hope to be back next year.
Tom Butler:Fantastic. Well, we will look for you. My next year. I'm hoping that my wife will join us and that will be the first time and she'll be doing it after 60, which was kind of cycling, or 60 was my attempt to cycle STP after 60. That's kind of the what launched it.
Chris Voigt:Well, Tom, we'll have to put you on team potato and we'll get some. We'll get some jerseys for you and your wife, that you guys can wear some nice potato jerseys.
Tom Butler:I love that. I will definitely sport a team potato jersey. Tell me about the STP sponsorship. Why is this event something you'd want to be associated with? You know, really?
Chris Voigt:because I think endurance athletes or athletes who are running marathons or doing events like STP are very conscious about what they eat. You know what they need for fuel, what they need for muscle recovery eat. You know what they need for fuel, what they need for muscle recovery. And we know just through focus group work that you know athletes really love potatoes. You know, especially during the events and that's something about STP, you know you got to keep fueled up during the event and so potatoes you know some of the small baby potatoes or potato wedges, are actually a great way to fuel during the event. You know it's easy on the stomachs. It's not like some of the. You know some folks use energy gels but they can be a little rough on the stomach. So potatoes are a great natural fuel for an event like STP or marathons.
Chris Voigt:And really, you know the reason why we want to focus on athletes, tom, is because I think that there's really kind of a misconception in the general public about, about nutritional benefits of potatoes. You know a lot of people focus on, well, potatoes are just kind of empty starch calories. There's really not much to it. And so we figure if we can partner with athletes who are very serious about their performance and want to eat the best foods for that performance. That's a great way of trickling it down to the mainstream public, of getting that message out there about how incredibly important potatoes are and how they can really play a strong role in nutrition and athletic performance. So that's one of the reasons why we sponsor STP. We're also involved in Bloomsday in Spokane, we've done the Rock and Roll Marathon also in and various other smaller events around the state, but just want athletes to talk about potatoes with the general public because I think that they understand firsthand you know the benefits of that fuel.
Tom Butler:One of the really valuable things that you bring as a partner is free potatoes at the halfway part at the end of day one on the campus of Centralia College. I'm just curious. I don't know if you've ever been in that booth or if you've ever heard from people that are in that French fry booth. I wonder what that experience would be like.
Chris Voigt:You know, like I said, it's our staff's favorite event the people that come to our booth and we have, you know, free French fries, nice, hot. We've got this portable van, almost kind of like an outdoor food truck, where we can slide out some fryers and make some great Washington French fries and get them seasoned up for folks. But they love it because the bike riders are just so grateful and thankful and recognize, you know, just the benefit of having that. You know getting a little some calories in you and you know who doesn't love French?
Chris Voigt:fries right. But yeah, I think of all the events that my staff go to. They say that that's their favorite. Just the people are just so genuine and just love us being there and so it's nice. And I remember I wasn't able to do it this year but the previous year I flew. I went as fast as I could that first day so that I could get. I went with a group there were about 12 of us riding together on our sort of team potato and I was with them for about the first 40 miles and they were kind of taking their time and making all the stops and enjoy because this was the first SDP for a lot of them, and so they were, you know, taking advantage of all the stops.
Chris Voigt:But I kind of wanted to spend some time in the booth, so I shot out in front of them and got there so I could spend, you know, a couple hours in the booth. But just a wonderful crowd and just such a great vibe. Everybody's so incredibly supportive of one another and it a great vibe.
Tom Butler:Everybody's so incredibly supportive of one another and it's just a wonderful event. It's really cool to me. I mean French fries get promoted, like at the beginning of the race. Like you know, the race organizers are like don't forget, you got free fries in Centralia, and you know there's quite a bit of an excitement. And when you've gone, you know 100 miles or whatever, just that thought of having French fries is quite the thing.
Chris Voigt:It really is, and you know I'll never be a person out there promoting French fries as a health food, right, but you know they're actually not too bad if you look at them. I mean there's three ingredients. It's not an ultra processed food, right, it's made from a potato. It's just simply sliced potato that's grown from the earth and you cut it into long, thin slices and you cook it in some healthy unsaturated fats, Then you season it with a little bit of salt.
Chris Voigt:And actually one of the weird things I did, man, I don't know about 10 or so years ago, is I went on an all potato diet right, I ate nothing but potatoes and my doctor actually made me add french fries and potato chips to that potato diet to make it healthier, because there's no fat in a potato, and so we actually had to add the fats from the cooking oils to so I could get the essential fatty acids that my body needed.
Chris Voigt:So yeah, eat french fries, don't feel guilty about eating them. Um, don't eat them every, every meal, but uh sure, enjoy them, don't feel guilty about it.
Tom Butler:I think it's impossible to question the executive director of the potato commission's commitment when he goes on an all potato diet yeah, it was.
Chris Voigt:It was, uh, it was not a well planned out uh deal. It was kind of a get reaction to a usda effort. The usda, uh, there's a program called wic stands for women, infants and children. It's kind of like a supplemental feeding program for for women and and who might be pregnant or with small children, getting a few extra dollars in their pockets. It was originally kind of a dairy program, you know it was able. It was extra money for moms to buy milk and dairy products for their kids.
Chris Voigt:But then the USDA did a study and they said well, you know, the WIC population is deficient in potassium and fiber and folate vitamin C. You know, probably the best way to deliver those nutrients is to allow them to use WIC dollars not just for milk and cheese but for fresh fruits and vegetables. And so that's what the USDA did. They came up and said OK, wic mothers, you can now buy any fruit or vegetable you want, except the potato.
Chris Voigt:I was like what have they not even read the nutrition label on a potato? It has all those things. It's got more potassium than a banana. You know a lot of folate fiber vitamin. You know half your vitamin C allowance almost in a potato. So yeah, it was kind of a personal protest. I said hey, usda, if you think potatoes are so bad for you, you know, let me prove you wrong by eating nothing but potatoes. I think I was watching a lot of Mythbusters at the time, and so it was kind of worst case scenario People think potatoes are so bad for you, why don't you eat nothing but potatoes and see if you can live off of them for 60 days or so?
Tom Butler:I love that, I really do. You might be surprised, after I talked so much about the French fries at that way part point, that I passed up the french fries this year. But the reason for that was that we actually had a baked potato dinner for us where we were staying that night and that was just super awesome. We had a mix of meat eaters and vegetarians and I put in a request that next time they do it with some vegetarian chili. But even at that it was just a great meal to have at the end of the day through some good fat on there. And then the other potato experience is in Vader Washington. Experience is in Vader Washington, which is the second day, and they have Vader taters. And man, I tell you there's just something about that, you know stopping at a big chunk of potato with some seasoning sauce on it, and it's such a treat I'm wondering about. At the commission you talked about the potato as nutrition, but the potato is such a comfort food.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, it really is. I mean, you know Voigt is a very German name and so you know I grew up eating potatoes twice a day. Essentially, Mom, would you know, we'd always have sort of boiled potatoes that we would mash on our own and, you know, do with whatever, and then the leftovers you know we would fry up in the morning for breakfast and yeah, there is just a lot of comfort. I mean, you know what's Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes? Right, you know there's just a really sense of gathering around the table and enjoying a meal, and it seems like potatoes are part of those, you know, key family gatherings, and so it brings a lot of comfort and a lot of nutrition and just a lot of satiety. I mean, you know it kind of fills up your gut. You know, eating a nice potato soup or potato stew on a cold winter day, it is truly one of those great comfort foods.
Tom Butler:You know we even use the saying meat and potato issue to mean a primary issue. Do you know much about how potatoes became such a big part of the diet in the US?
Chris Voigt:That's a great question, you know. I think a lot of it has to do with the European ancestry of a lot of us. You know potatoes originated in South America, peru. You know the Spaniards came over and brought it over to Europe.
Chris Voigt:It didn't really it didn't really take off immediately. People weren't really aware of potatoes as a brand new food. You know, there was never any mention of the potato in the Bible, and so what is this strange thing that they're eating? But then it eventually caught on and I think Ireland is a really great example where, like the population of Ireland was roughly about a million people, I think, and they had always struggled with food security. You know they got invaded, I don't know how many times, and you know the easiest or best way to invade a country was to sabotage their crop, you know, burn their grain crops, for example.
Chris Voigt:Well, the potato provided stability for Ireland. You know it grew underground so it was protected from invaders, and fire provided so much more nutrition, more vitamins and minerals than a grain could. And so, all of a sudden, the population went from 1 million to 20 million after the introduction of the potato, and so it really, you know, all of a sudden then became sort of the fabric of a lot of European diets, because it did provide nutrition and a great source of consistent food supply year in and year out. And so I think that's likely where it came from. Then, of course, as we colonized America or North America. You know, we brought the potato with us but yeah, and I think that's really kind of sort of the origins of it, but then it's just become a fabric of our society because, you know again, because we've been eating them for so long, it just feels like it's who we are.
Tom Butler:It's comfortable and family. I think because I was out this spring on my hands and knees putting potatoes, chunks of potatoes, in the ground. You know, and actually just I don't know, a week or so ago I pried up some of the first potatoes we got in the pan. So you know, I'm a potato farming operation here of one row.
Chris Voigt:All right. Well, I'll make sure you pay your four cents for every hundred pounds you grow.
Tom Butler:Now is it you grow or you sell. I sell.
Chris Voigt:It is sell. It is sell, but I think I'm probably pretty.
Tom Butler:I think I'm probably clear of that.
Chris Voigt:What kind of variety did you grow?
Tom Butler:Oh, boy, I grew the variety that my mother-in-law gave me to put in the ground.
Chris Voigt:Was it like a russet or a yellow? Yeah, it was like a russet.
Tom Butler:But talking about farming, where does Washington State stand as a potato producing state?
Chris Voigt:Well, in my mind, in heart, we're number one, right? We produce roughly about 10 billion pounds of potatoes every year here in Washington State. So I mean that's a lot. That's more than a pound for every man, woman and child on this planet, Right? But here in the US, technically, if you add up the total production, we're number two behind Idaho. But what really is the distinguishing factor between us and Idaho is is that we actually have the highest yields in the world, so we can actually grow more potatoes, more food, on an acre of ground here in Washington than they can in Idaho or literally anywhere else in the world. We're 50% higher than the U? S average. Usually. You know, we're averaging right around 30 to 32 tons of potatoes that we grow per acre, whereas the US average is probably closer to about 25 per acre.
Tom Butler:That's interesting yeah.
Chris Voigt:You know it's just that northern elevation, you know we've got that northern latitude where we get long. You know sunny days, you know they're warm, kind of cools off at night, a long growing season. You know potatoes just love Washington state and it's that kind of light, fluffy. You know volcanic soil that we have that's also really critical to did potatoes. And then you're like 90% of the potatoes growing in the state are on the east side, where you know we don't have a lot of natural rainfall and so we supplement with irrigation and so we're able to provide the exact amount of water, exactly when the plant needs it, and so it's not like other states that you know rain or mother nature is interfering with their potato production. You know it's almost like we're growing it in a lab because we can be so precise on how we manage it. So that makes a big difference and that's able. That's allowed us to, yeah, have the highest yields in the entire world.
Tom Butler:I want listeners to be thinking here for just a bit about how many varieties of potatoes there are in the world. I'm going to ask you a question unrelated to that first, but I'd like people to think about. How many varieties of potatoes do you think there are? Do you have any information on how potatoes actually got to Washington?
Chris Voigt:Oh, yeah, yeah, it's tribal, it's Native American tribal folklore. Essentially, the first potato that arrived in Washington state was the Ozette potato, and it was actually carried by the Spaniards, I think. I think in 1792, they created a little fort Nia Bay, I believe, is where they set it up and they were growing these Ozette potatoes in the big garden that they had for the folks that were stationed there at that fort and the local tribe, macaw, I believe. They went up and bartered and traded for the potatoes and eventually the Spaniards left I don't know if they I guess they didn't like the amount of rain that was falling and so they abandoned the fort and then the Native Americans took over those potatoes you know they had tried them earlier, as they were bartering and trading with their visitors and they took over that garden and then they had cultivated those and grown those on their own since, you know, for hundreds of years, and so that was actually really the first potato that was grown in Washington state was 1792.
Tom Butler:And the Ozette is still around.
Chris Voigt:We've actually had a potato, someone who grows seed and took that on that variety and they've been able to, you know, keep it going for a lot of years now. So it's a really kind of cool story.
Tom Butler:It is very interesting. Okay, so, listeners, how many potato varieties would you guess there are? So, chris, how would you answer that question?
Chris Voigt:That's it. I'm not sure there's actually a precise answer because I think sort of the consensus that a lot of folks will say well, there's, you know, 4,000 different varieties of potatoes that are grown in the world, that are cultivated and grown, and that's probably accurate. No one, I don't know if anybody's actually done an exact count. You know there's a potato genetic repository, essentially in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where they have seeds like true little seeds of potatoes, I think, for about 5,000 varieties. And just us alone in our breeding program. We partner with Oregon State and Washington State and the University of Idaho on a tri-state breeding program. We're producing every year about 150,000 genetically different plants every year that we grow them in the greenhouse, in a pot and this is just through traditional breeding. You know, cross pollinating Get about 150,000 seeds that we plant and then we plant them in a pot and each pot, you know, grows like these three kind of small tubers and then we plant those out in the field and we see, okay, does it look like a potato?
Chris Voigt:How does it? You know how many are under that plant. You know, does it look like? You know something that we might want to take another look at, and so of the 150,000 plants, we might narrow it down to 1,000 that first year, and then we'll save those tubers and plant them again the following year and take another look at them, and then we'll narrow that down to maybe 400. And then we'll gather up those tubers from those 400 plants and plant them again and take a look at them and might narrow it down to 70. So that kind of goes on and for about 15 years. It usually takes us about 15 years to develop a new variety, but so it's hard to say so national or globally, we cultivate roughly about 4 000, but we're literally looking at hundreds of thousands of plants every year globally to what the next great potato is.
Tom Butler:That is just so interesting. Again, it's one of those things that I think we just have lost a connection. A lot of us have just lost a connection to agriculture, and so you know, you don't think about that process as you're in the grocery store grabbing your potatoes.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, it is really fascinating just the amount of work that goes into it.
Chris Voigt:You know, because like for example, a new variety that just came out, the Clearwater Russet. So the Russet Burbank potato was sort of the mainstay of Russet potatoes in Washington state and it was truly an heirloom potato. You know one of those brown potatoes in the grocery store and it was, you know, I think it was created in like 1860 or something like that. And if you cross for the Washington listeners or Seattle listeners, mercer Island, there's a was it Luther Burbank Botanical Garden or something like that on Mercer Island and that's the guy who invented this potato that we had used for, you know, over 150 years essentially, but some of the new variety.
Chris Voigt:But it's a fickle potato to grow, but it's delicious and we've been trying to replicate. You know, can we find something just as delicious but easier to grow? And we found some. We found some that use, you know, significantly less water, less fertilizer, that are more resistant to pests and diseases, that are more resistant to pests and diseases, that are more consistent, higher nutrition. And so that's what we're trying to do is we try to build upon the legacy of the past through just traditional breeding to create that next great potato. So yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into it and if you watch the television in Washington grown, you can learn about some of that science in agriculture and have a better connection to farming. So thanks for bringing that up, tom.
Tom Butler:Yeah for sure. Can you talk about the properties of potatoes that determine how they get chosen for recipes? You know, there's the potatoes that are baking potatoes, there's boiling potatoes. What are those different properties?
Chris Voigt:Yeah, I mean, you know the potatoes truly versatile.
Chris Voigt:You can use any potato for any recipe, right, but depending on what you want.
Chris Voigt:So, for example, you want a potato that is higher in starch for things like frying or baking. So if you like a like fluffy baked potato, you try to find a potato that's higher in starch content and generally that's going to be one of the russet potatoes, so you'll have a lighter, fluffier baked potato. But if you want something a little moister denser for example, you know, particularly for soups and stews, and use a red or a yellow potato, example, they tend to hold up their shape better if they're boiled or steamed, whereas some of these higher starch content russet potatoes you put them in a stew, they kind of kind of disintegrate a little bit, and so really that the hot the for soups and stews you use a potato with a higher moisture content, and if you want something drier and fluffier, like a crisp, fluffy french fry that you can break open, or a fluffy baked potato, you use a higher starch content, and so generally the reds and yellows a lower starch content and the russets are generally a higher starch content.
Tom Butler:There's a hashtag out there, powered by potatoes, which I think the Olympics going on. You know, I think it's interesting, this powered by potatoes hashtag, and I think the commission has contributed to that content, to that hashtag. I'm wondering if you talk about that a little bit and kind of that aspect of athletic fuel that you mentioned earlier.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, yeah, it really relates back to, you know, positioning potatoes as an athletic fuel. So we started using that hashtag I think it's probably been about eight or nine years ago, once we started trying to incorporate, you know, potatoes with athletes, and so it's really about just kind of spreading that message on. You know, reminding the public that you know potatoes are really valuable for athletic performance. You know some of our most elite athletes are eating potatoes not only before and after the events for muscle recovery, for example but also during the events.
Chris Voigt:I remember doing focus group work throughout the country. You know listening to elite athletes and you know we'd have a room of maybe 10 athletes. You know in the room and this is where you sit, behind the smoky glass and you listen to people talk about you know potatoes in this instance, and I think 40% of them were already taking potatoes with them on. You know endurance rides or endurance runs. You know they'd have a little baggie full of potato wedges or steamed potatoes or seasoned potatoes and use them as fuel. So it wasn't a hard lift for us to associate potatoes with endurance athletes because already you know roughly about 40% of them during our focus group work. We're already using them on their runs and rides, and then you know a lot of them. You know obviously would use them before and after, as you know, preconditioning and then recovery afterwards.
Tom Butler:I think that one of the potato recipes that are overlooked as athletic fuel, in my opinion, is potato salad. I'm a vegetarian and you know you cook a potato salad. You throw some eggs in there for protein. You know, maybe some green olives in there, some good fat in there, I mean, to me it's a pretty serious performance fuel. I'm going to be doing a ride across Washington in September. If the wildfires cooperate. It's over 400 miles, and so I'm going to be eating quite a bit of potato salad on that ride.
Chris Voigt:Oh, I think that's a great choice. Actually, that's one of my favorite ways to eat it also, and the thing about potato salad is it's really kind of high in resistant starch, and that's something that I really didn't know a lot about until I did my potato only diet and the way I learned it, you know, because I was eating 20 potatoes a day or I had to get 2,200 calories in me and I wasn't exercising at the time. So the intent was just to maintain my weight. But I lost 21 pounds even though I was eating, you know, 2,200 calories of potatoes a day, and I think a lot of that was because of the resistant starch I would essentially eat. You know, I'd meal prep, so I'd make all my potatoes the night before and then put it in my fridge and then eat them throughout the next day. And so when you take a potato and you chill it, essentially you're converting the starches in.
Chris Voigt:That potato will convert to what's called resistant starch, and resistant starch is almost like fiber. It literally just goes through you. Your body doesn't necessarily absorb it, and so, even though I was eating 2200 calories and that's kind of what I needed to maintain my weight, I actually was losing weight because I was what I needed to maintain my weight. I actually was losing weight because I was, I think, consuming so much more resistant starch than I'd ever have and my body just wasn't absorbing those calories. It was just kind of flushing out. So it's a great way to you know.
Chris Voigt:I think that you know, if you're interested in weight control or weight management, chilled potatoes are a great way of feeling that satiety of eating potatoes but not necessarily having to absorb all those calories. And you know it's not like you're not going to absorb 50% of the calories. You know resistant starch and we're trying to do some research on that and what you know. There is some variability between varieties, but we think that a potato anywhere between 3% to 10% of the calories can be tied up as resistant starch in a potato, depending on the variety and how long it was chilled and so forth. So, yeah, I love potato salad. It's one of my favorite things to eat.
Tom Butler:It's one thing that I have to look at. I do have blood sugar issues, and so you know the aspect of potatoes as resistant starch is important to me. It sounds like at the Potato Commission that there's. You work with dieticians, you work with scientists, and it sounds like this is one of the areas that you guys are exploring. Is that right to say?
Chris Voigt:Yeah, we actually collaborate with really kind of all the states, all the potato producing states, and we fund an organization called. It's called APRI. I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but essentially it's to fund research on potatoes. You know all sorts of things, whether it's resistant starch the effect of resistant starch, you know. And what about what does it do to the bacteria in your gut? You know. You know what are the benefits of that. What about satiety, you know. Do you feel full? Are you still hungry after eating potatoes? We've actually invested a lot in potato research from a human health standpoint. And then also, you know, of course, we're also investing in how do we make a potato more nutritious, and so through our breeding programs, we're also looking at that too. So, yeah, research is really critical, not only for looking at how the potato interacts with human health, but then also how do we make it even more nutritious.
Tom Butler:I think for people that are outside, you know again just picking up potatoes at the grocery store, it's hard to conceptualize how massive the potato is, and I remember I saw a huge facility, I think it was, in Othello Washington, which is central state I don't know eastern part of Washington, and it really left an impression on me. I'm wondering if you could give a sense of the scale as far as how many Washington potatoes are produced and consumed.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, well, Othello is actually the French fry capital of the world.
Tom Butler:Okay.
Chris Voigt:They have that designation and because Washington State has the highest yields and also the most consistent quality of any growing region, we've attracted a lot of potato processing or like French fry manufacturers, for example, and that's what Othello has. But the scope and scale are huge. I mean, you know again, we're producing about 10 billion pounds of potatoes and I think the most impressive thing to see is that potato storage where actually growers store these. They're buildings that are at least the length of a football field, some of them are three times the length of a football field and they're about 25 feet high and they have the floors are either concrete and they have these vents in them where they're shooting up all this kind of cool air and moist air.
Chris Voigt:Because potatoes in storage you want to keep them cool, you want to keep them moist so they don't shrivel up. You know you got to keep some moisture in the air and if you walk in there and there's usually they have catwalks where you can walk kind of down the middle of it I mean it is impressive to see potatoes stacked, you know 25 feet high for you know 300 yards deep. I mean it is, it's amazing, it's like how can people eat all that I mean, there's just no possible way. And yet that storage, you know, will only last, you know, maybe a week and a half. You know it takes a week and a half to go through all that, to make them into. You know whether it's selling them into the grocery stores or making them into French fries. And so there's literally these potato storages. I don't know exactly how many we have, but you know there's hundreds of them and we go through a big building of french fry or potatoes like that you know every week.
Tom Butler:Well, I don't know if they do tours. Do they do tours of those facilities? I can't imagine. I think they probably have to control it pretty heavily.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, you know we're kind of. You know there's a lot of food safety laws, kind of food security laws and so but I think you know. So if anybody wants to tour a potato storage, you call Chris Voigt, 509-765-8845, and I will make it happen. So we will get you out and you can look at one. But they are impressive, particularly come. What's really cool is in the fall, as they're filling them up.
Chris Voigt:They got this like long conveyor you know that empties out of it Because you got a potato harvester is not like a grain combine where all the grain can be stored in that combine as you, as you go, harvest the grain across the field.
Chris Voigt:Potato harvester just literally lifts the potatoes out of the ground and puts it into a truck and tries to eliminate all the rocks or dirt clods and so forth. And so you got to have a truck going along your hearse for the entire time and then, once that truck's filled up, it drives straight to the storage and it backs up and it drops the potatoes onto a conveyor belt and then the conveyor belt runs the length of the storage and then lifts them up it's called a piler and it goes up another conveyor that takes it up and there's literally a guy with a joystick, almost like anybody who plays video games. You're going to be a great potato piler operator because it's all on a joystick and you can move that conveyor around, you know, to the left and right to make sure that you're piling up your potatoes evenly. So that's quite the sight to see.
Tom Butler:So anybody who wants potato harvest call that number and we'll try to get you hooked up with a grower. Well, I might put together a field trip for that. I remember reluctantly going on a field trip with my daughter to a commercial bakery and being blown away just by the size of the operation, you know, just by the size of like the hot dog bun part of the operation, and so since then I find things like that fascinating. So maybe you'll have to figure out some time to put together a field trip to a potato storage facility.
Tom Butler:You'd mentioned that the commission is really I'm going to say a collaboration, I'm going to say a collaboration Washington State government with potato growers and I think probably a part of that is because there's a lot of economic value to the state from potato farming.
Chris Voigt:Can you talk about that a bit? Oh yeah, it is shocking. So, you know, we like to say we have about 250 potato farmers in the state, but that's really kind of counting uncles and brothers and cousins all farming together. So if you boil it down, we've actually only got roughly maybe maybe 80 potato farms in the state. There's been mass consolidation over the last you know, 20, 30 years, just because the profit margins have been getting smaller and smaller, and so the only way you can afford to, you know, send your kids to college, for example, is if you get bigger. And so we've seen a lot of that.
Chris Voigt:Just those 80 potato farms are responsible for over 36,000 jobs in the state, just because of, like I said, 90% of what we grow we're adding value to in the way of creating. You know, whether it's instant mashed potatoes or scalloped potatoes, or french fries or hash brown patties or tater tots or potato starch, you know we're making all these products. So it's a lot of jobs. We also export roughly about anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of what we grow is actually headed overseas. For example, if you were to go to McDonald's in Japan, there is a 95% chance that the French fry you ate in Japan, mcdonald's came from Washington state and then also just the economic activity generated from those 80 potato farms kicks in roughly about $7.4 billion into the Washington economy. So you know, even though we're just 80 farms, it's a huge deal. Potatoes are a very big deal. We're not small potatoes in Washington, we're big potatoes.
Tom Butler:I love it. I love it. Are there any big threats to the potato crop? If so, what role does the commission play in mediating risk?
Chris Voigt:play in mediating risk. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're at the whims of what Mother Nature throws at us and so could be any you know insect or disease or pest late blight.
Chris Voigt:If you know, if you're familiar with history of the Irish potato famine, you know, remember I said you know 20 million people were living off of. You know, potatoes were probably like 80% of their diet back then. And there was a disease, literally a fungus, that spread throughout all of Ireland and it's a fungus that just blows in the wind. The spores are picked up by the wind and wherever those spores land they'll infect those plants and it literally wiped out the entire crop in Ireland and that's what created the famine and millions of people starved, millions migrated to leave the starvation or lack of food. And the late blight is still alive and present today throughout the world, and so in Washington State it is always a concern. So we actually have a very good monitoring network set up throughout the Columbia Basin or throughout Washington State, looking for the possibility of late blight. We've got little spore sniffers. We've got little machines that suck in air and see if there's any late blight spores that might be floating around. We also have what we call a decision aid system. It's almost like AI computing. You know. It looks at the weather, it looks at the moisture and it kind of gives you a risk evaluation of you know. It looks at the weather, it looks at the moisture and it kind of gives you a risk evaluation of you know, is it possible that you know, are the conditions really ripe for the virus to invade and spread? And so growers look at all this data and all this monitoring and then they can make their decision of, okay, do I need to apply some type of protectant fungicide on my plant? And that's really what every grower has to do that, whether you're an organic grower or a conventional grower, everybody has to spray for light blight, because if you don't, it literally could wipe out the entire crop in the entire state in literally, oh, probably two weeks weeks if the winds were blowing just right and so everybody has to be very on top of that. And yeah, so we spend a lot on research. We spend a lot on trying to come up with new varieties that are resistant to late blight. We're also looking at better monitoring and data to help us with that, to really try to limit the amount of fungicides that we have to use. So, yeah, we're heavily invested in trying to do research to really kind of put late blight to bed forever so that we don't have to worry about it.
Chris Voigt:But, like I said, it's been around for a couple hundred years anyways and it's a continual battle. It could be anything else, it could be other insects, invasions Japanese beetle is a new one that's showing up in Washington state. We're kind of keeping our eye on that. Fortunately, you know, potatoes aren't its number one crop that it eats. There's other things that it prefers. But yeah, we always have to be very, very on top of things to make sure that we can continue to produce food. You know, if Washington State lost its potato crop I mean that is almost a third of all the potatoes grown in the US that would be detrimental. And let me tell you how it affects your pocketbook, tom.
Chris Voigt:So I think it was two years ago, we just had an overall shortage nationally of potatoes. It was just hot and the yields just weren't there. So it was only about a 10% reduction nationwide in the potato crop. But we saw the price, just that. From that 10% reduction in supply, the price at retail went up anywhere between 100 and 300% depending on the time of the year that you bought those potatoes. And so imagine losing 30% of the crop, not just 10%, what that would do to price. And so you know food. You know we often take for granted our food supply and that will always be there. And I think COVID was maybe sort of the first glimpse that we have ever gotten of what bare grocery store shelves look like and how scary that is. But there's a lot of scary things out there that can dramatically reduce food supply, and so we're trying to stay on top of that. And don't let me get into climate change, because that's another one we're focusing a lot of our attention on, and what the impacts of that could be.
Tom Butler:Well, I think that is an interesting area and I'm wondering about environmental stewardship. There are probably different levels of environmental stewardship. Is the commission involved with that, or how is the commission involved with that?
Chris Voigt:Oh, you know, that's all that we do. You know we're all about sustainability. You know how our entire focus is. How do we produce more food using less resources? How do we use less land, less water, less nutrients? You?
Chris Voigt:know, those are the three big from an environmental footprint, the three biggest thing. I mean we got to grow food right and so you're going to have some type of footprint on the global stage. But the three biggest things that contribute to that footprint are how much land you have to use, how much water do you have to use and how much fertilizer you have to use to grow your crop. And so we've been trying to figure out how to be even more efficient than we ever have. And it's funny because you know we have gotten so far in water use efficiency. I thought that we couldn't get any better.
Chris Voigt:And then someone came up with this really cool idea of like dragging these soaker hoses across a field. It's called mobile drip irrigation. So right now I don't know if you've ever flown over eastern or central Washington you see these round crop circles. Those are called center pivots. It's a. It's a sprinklers, that kind of run on an arm that go in a circle and go around. Well, we have had these like low pressure drop nozzles that are super efficient and don't use nearly as much water as we used to use in the past. But now, dragging you, instead of these sprinklers we actually use like soaker hoses, or just dragging soaker hoses around the field, we've been able to reduce water by another 20%. And it's like I didn't even think that was possible.
Chris Voigt:I thought we had sort of reached the plateau of technology on how we can get better. And the soaker hose doesn't work for every crop and we're still trying to figure out. It's brand new. I know we actually just got a Gates Foundation grant to help us hook up another 20 growers to do some more trial work and experimentation. But we're using, you know, for those that, the limited experience that we've had so far 20% reduction in water and because the water is not hitting the leaves anymore you know water on the leaves create an environment for bacteria and fungus we can actually use less fungicides. So again, it's another sort of sustainable win by just having creative, innovative people in the room to come up with some of these solutions. So technology plays a really critical role in helping us figure out how to grow more food using less resources.
Tom Butler:It's just a fantastic illustration of the things that go on behind the scenes when it comes to food production that people just don't think about. You know, just every day there's work being done to secure our food supply.
Chris Voigt:And one of the interesting challenges, tom, I'd mentioned climate change. You know Washington, you know our temperatures might not necessarily the maximums won't get hotter necessarily but we're going to have longer durations of heat which can impact food production. But really the kind of the scariest thing is what's going to happen up in the Cascade Mountains, because while the maximum temperatures won't necessarily be significantly higher, the minimum temperatures will, and so what that means is our winters will be warmer and we have the real possibility of losing all that lower elevation snowpack, and we rely on the snow in the mountains as sort of our water reservoir. We want it to sort of melt off slowly in the spring and summer and deliver nice, cold, clean water to our streams for fish as well as for food production. And so we've got to figure out how are we going to manage that now. How are we going to still be able to grow food or maintain the level of production that we have with potentially a reduced water supply? So that's something we have to figure out.
Chris Voigt:And then the scarier part is California is a much more dire circumstances.
Chris Voigt:So you know, california, central Valley particularly, is sort of the salad bowl of the US, and they're going to have to permanently retire anywhere between one and two million acres of irrigated agriculture, and we're already starting to see some of those crops move north. I know one of the big tomato companies who makes a very famous, world-famous ketchup. They're interested in moving to Washington State, and they've been. This is the second year. They've planted, I think, five acres with about 10 different growers to see how the yield and quality look for tomatoes in Washington State. But they're looking at moving up tomato production in Washington because they know, for example, the Columbia River is a much, much more sustainable water supply than what they've got in California. So even though our Cascade Mountains you know we've got to figure that out the headwaters of the Columbia River in British Columbia look really, really good for climate and so the water supply is going to be very good in the Columbia River, and so that's why a lot of California crops will likely have to move to Washington State.
Tom Butler:There's so much connection there and things are interrelated and everything. It's important to have a broad perspective of things for sure.
Chris Voigt:Yeah, and you got to have ketchup with french fries, right yeah.
Tom Butler:I know my wife. I mean, that is definitely like anytime you fry a potato it has to have ketchup with it. Now it seems like everybody knows about potatoes, you know. And so I think about marketing, like are there still ways to expand domestic consumption of potatoes?
Chris Voigt:Yeah, you know we like to think so. You know potatoes like to think so. You know potatoes are America's favorite vegetable. We probably eat more potatoes than any other vegetable out there. Roughly, I think, right, around 125 pounds of potatoes. You know, most of that is, I'd say, probably about 60% of that is in the form of a processed product, like a french fry or hash brown or tater tot. But we're still eating a lot of fresh potatoes.
Chris Voigt:And so, you know, the challenges from a marketing perspective is because potatoes are so prevalent and they're out there and they're, you know, they have the. You know, if you look at, I mean, every other food group would love to be potatoes because we're all so many menus across the country. I, I mean it's, you know, can you imagine? You know, like Brussels sprouts. I love Brussels sprouts, for example, but you can't find them on every menu in the country, right? Or potatoes, it's pretty close so, but you don't ever want to become just ordinary or basic, right, and so you've got to come up with cool, sexy ways to eat french fries or eat potatoes, and so that's where we try to focus our energies on.
Chris Voigt:And then also, you know, kind of the younger generation. Gen Z is a great example of. You know, a lot of them don't know how to cook, and so you know it's an opportunity for us to just teach them the basics. This is how you bake a potato. This is how you fry a potato. This is how you make french fries. This is how you bake a potato. This is how you fry a potato. This is how you make french fries. This is how you slice them. And you know, just kind of give them the basics. We generally try to come up with fun, exciting, cool recipes to generate interest or maintaining your interest in potatoes, but then we also recognize that we've got to educate the generations that are up and coming on the value of potato and how to cook them and how to eat them and how to enjoy them, and so it's never-ending education on our behalf.
Tom Butler:How about international markets? Is there more room for expansion there?
Chris Voigt:Yeah, yeah, there really is. The international markets are probably growing about 7% a year. China is making huge investments in potato production. You know they've got to figure out how to grow more food using less resources, and they have identified potatoes as the way to do that. So they're actually planning on, in the next 20 years, really ramping up production, and they're hoping that potatoes will make up in that 20-year growth, or the amount of new food that they've got to produce in this 20 years. They're planning on about 50 percent of those calories coming from potatoes, and the reason for that, tom, is because of just the sustainability of it.
Chris Voigt:So you know right, you know a lot of people associate rice with with Chinese food.
Chris Voigt:Right, and there's a lot of rice in China, china but rice takes 10 times more water to produce.
Chris Voigt:It also takes four times the amount of land to produce than potatoes, and and from a fertilizer standpoint, nitrogen particularly, which is the which has the biggest carbon footprint it takes twice as much nitrogen to grow rice as it does potatoes, and so you get more calories growing potatoes than you do rice four times more calories, plus it's added nutrition, so many more vitamins and minerals, and so that's why China is really ramping up production.
Chris Voigt:So Washington State, because of our access to the deep water ports in Tacoma and Seattle, that's why we export roughly, you know, 50 to 70 percent of what we grow, been tremendous amount of growth, and actually most of our international customers have been on rations. We just can't keep up with demand. We are pretty much maxed out on the number of acres that we can grow in Washington, just because of water availability. Now there's still plenty of water in, let's say, the Columbia River, but to be able to deliver it to farms that don't currently have it it's expensive. We'd have to build a whole bunch of new irrigation infrastructure that we just don't have money for right now, and so we could grow a lot more potatoes to try to keep up with demand, but the cost of that water infrastructure is just overwhelming for potato growth at this point. But yeah, domestic growth is actually probably around the 1% a year is what we're currently seeing, but internationally it's about a 7% growth.
Tom Butler:Well, chris, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. We talk quite a bit about nutrition and diet on the podcast here, and I think that an important part of understanding what we put on our bodies is to think about where it comes from and how it's grown, and so I've loved this conversation. I hope everybody has found it as interesting as me. Maybe I'm just a little bit geeky when it comes to this kind of thing, but thanks for taking the time and educating us about potatoes and kind of what goes on behind the scenes.
Chris Voigt:Well, I love it, Tom, and I love that you've done SDP, so hopefully we get a chance to bump into each other next year. Maybe you know we can ride together with our team potato jerseys, but it's been a pleasure. Potatoes, you know, fit great into a vegetarian diet or, or, you know, a carnivore diet, you know, or omnivore, I guess there's just a lot of ways to use it, and so it's been fun chatting with you, Tom, and thanks for having me.
Tom Butler:Yeah, for sure, take care now.
Chris Voigt:All right, we'll see ya.
Tom Butler:As I said in the interview, I believe part of thinking about what we should be putting in our bodies is learning about where our food comes from. I grew up in an agricultural area, but most of my adult life has been spent far from farms. As a result, I don't visually connect what I see in the stores with how things are produced. I really meant it when I said that I would like to visit a potato storage facility. What it takes to feed the world is staggering when you see the scale at those points in the system. It's a good reminder that if we want high food quality, we need to find every opportunity to advocate for a system that sees food quality as the most important measure of system success. However you choose to eat potatoes yes, I am taking it for granted that the vast majority of you eat potatoes and however you eat them, I hope they are fueling some fantastic cycling adventures. And remember age is just a gear change. Bye.
