Smaller root size marks state’s sweet potato crop
HOUSTON, Miss. (Press Release) – According to an MSU Press Release, as president of both the Mississippi and U.S. sweet potato councils, Caleb Englert knows the impact this year’s expected below-average crop will have on the state’s growers.
“Just like any farmers out there, they’re feeling the pressure from the banks, the crops and the low prices,” Englert said. “Some growers are throwing Hail Marys hoping to live to fight another year.
“Everybody’s heart and soul go into putting the crop in, and when all odds are against you with labor and inputs, you just have to take the wins when you can,” he said of this year’s tough growing season.
Englert farms about 150 acres of sweet potatoes in Chickasaw County. While the immigrant labor force has been under political scrutiny in recent months, he said Mississippi growers have had no interruptions from immigration issues because the state’s farmers use the H2A program to get legal farm hands.
“We go through the right channels,” Englert said. “It’s too much of a risk to run and not do it the right way.”
Lorin Harvey is the sweet potato specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service working at the Pontotoc Ridge-Flatwoods Branch Experiment Station in Pontotoc. He said the state’s sweet potato crop was about 70% harvested by mid-October, but sizes were small, leading to fewer pounds harvested per acre.
“We definitely had a bumper crop last year, and this year will end up being below average. Several operations have reported a 20% to 30% drop in yield compared to last year’s crop,” Harvey said. “It’s a combination of things.”
Challenges began at planting, when rainy weather delayed planting by a few weeks. But the bigger problem was areas that went 70 or more days without a drop of rain and no irrigation.
“You can’t go that long and grow a decent crop,” Harvey said.
The Delta weather station near Houston recorded just 6.5 inches of rain since the end of June. Historically, that station gets an average of 15 inches of rain in that same time period.
Only about 10% to 15% of Mississippi’s crop is irrigated, and these are some of the couple thousand acres of sweet potatoes growing near Charleston and Coffeeville. This year, Mississippi growers planted about 32,000 acres of sweet potatoes, up about 1,000 acres from what was planted in 2024.
“Compared to last year, the crop does not look great,” Harvey said. “The root numbers and quality are there, but the potatoes are very small. Small size reduces their value. Plus, sweet potatoes are sold by weight. Smaller potatoes mean there is less weight overall of the crop to sell.”
Insect and disease pressures were normal for the year, and even the high heat was not nearly as much of a detriment as the extended period of dry weather.
Harvey said harvest is about 10 days behind schedule as most growers tried to wait to get some rain on their fields. Even late in the growing season, a good rain allowed sweet potato vines to fill out and size up the crop growing underground.
“The first acres started being harvested the last week of August, and harvest should wrap up about the first week of November,” Harvey said. “As soon as you are done with harvest, growers run wide open trying to wash them for the prime sale.”
The largest volume of the sweet potato crop is sold for Thanksgiving. Sweet potatoes are safely stored unwashed for up to a year. Harvey said the goal is to run out of last year’s potatoes just as harvest begins on the next crop.
Although sizes are smaller than last year, prices started strong primarily because North Carolina, the nation’s largest sweet potato producer, had a catastrophic crop failure in 2024 to Hurricane Helene. Prices started moving lower once harvest began this fall.
Will Maples, Extension agricultural economist, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported prices for U.S. No. 1 sweet potatoes from Mississippi were $27 per 40-pound carton as of Oct. 14, 2025.
“It is important to note that this is a wholesale price and not the price a farmer receives, which would be lower,” Maples said.
USDA will release final sweet potato yield figures in January.
