Marketing sweetpotatoes in the United States: A serious challenge for small-to-moderate volume growers

Abstract

Historically, U.S. sweetpotato marketing efforts have focused primarily on the holiday seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the intervening weeks. Typically, November and December sweetpotato sales are nearly 1/3 of total annual sales, a figure that far exceeds the period's normal expected sales rate of 17% (Lucier, 2008). While sweetpotatoes remain a popular holiday food for Americans, most consumers have grown accustomed to year-round availability of fruits and vegetables so recent marketing efforts have stressed the year-round availability of nutritious, healthy, high beta-carotene sweetpotatoes. Year-round availability of sweetpotatoes became common about 20 years ago when growers and shippers built environmentally controlled storage facilities, adopted improved curing and storage technologies, and minimized major pest and disease problems in stored sweetpotatoes.