Growers must study and research all through the planting and growing process in order to get a high quality, high yielding potato crop. Potatoes have come a long way from their origins in the small mountain fields of South America. Today, potatoes are grown all around the world, in more than 180 countries. Only corn grows in more places. Following Russia is Poland, the United States and either Canada or China.
Crop rotation is practiced in potato production.
Potatoes are usually rotated with wheat and alfalfa, barley and sugar beets. Commercial fertilizers are worked into the soil in varying amounts per soil, climate and cultivar requirements. Today, instead of leaving the small potatoes that are no good for eating in the ground to sprout again as the Indians did in the Andes, commercial potato growers harvest all the potatoes and the small tubers are usually processed into potato flakes or granules. Most potato growers rotate their fields from year to year so the same field never has a potato crop two years in a row. When a field is planted into potatoes, potato growers use large mechanical planters that can plant several rows of high-quality seed potatoes at one time.