Potato News from Asia

Farmers in the North Lebanon town of Hissa protested Thursday potato imports they said would devastate their sales, state media reported.

As growth slows down and intense competition emerges from regional brands in potato chips, PepsiCo and ITC are shifting their focus more towards newer and healthier forms of packaged snacks, the market for which is growing at twice the speed.

Even though the ban by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on sale of potatoes to other states over the past three years has been lifted, cases of farmer suicides, which some say may have been driven by the fear of heavy losses, are still being reported.

The Government of India has stepped up taking measures, well in advance, to avoid any situation of abnormal increase prices of onion and potato.

Raising China potato production is of utmost importance. In the coming years a great effort is to be made to meet the increasing demand of potatoes for fresh consumption and for industry.

Provincial Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Farrukh Javed has said that Pakistan is capable of exporting up to one million tons of potato because of its bumper crop this year.

Potato farmers in Deesa, Gujarat are concerned because there is not enough potato storage space for the large harvest.

A bumper crop, coupled with weak demand from other States, has led to a free-fall in potatoes prices in West Bengal.

Last month, McDonald's India has cut the amount of calories and salt on its Indian menu as it fights to hold on to customers in a rapidly growing developing market where newer, healthier fast-food options are just starting to catch on.

It was bound to happen. This isn't out of the blue. It makes perfectly good sense. In South Korea, McDonald's is rolling out honey butter french fries.

The Indian government has decided to remove the minimum export price of potato as its availability has increased and prices have eased in domestic markets.

In the Indian State of Karnataka, the Department of Horticulture has decided to provide certified seed potatoes to 1,000 farmers for pre-monsoon cultivation on a pilot basis.

The potato is only a side-dish in China, where rice and noodles made from wheat dominate the dinner table. But now the Chinese government wants to turn the potato into the fourth staple food in the country in order to better utilize scarce farmland.

TOMRA Sorting Food is pleased to announce the availability of the Chinese langcode version of its website the newest addition in TOMRA’s effort to be closer to the customer and to serve them in their own langcode.

In South Korea, Nongshim Co.’s Sumi Potato Chip Honey-Mustard set a new record for domestic snack sales with 3.6 million bags sold in the first month, the Korean snack company announced.

Over the last two years, Armenia’s potato exports have risen considerably and now exceed the countries potato import.

The ongoing campaign of protests and transport blockades by Bangladesh's second biggest political party, BNP, is taking its toll on public life and business activity, including potato farmers.

KFC opened the doors to its first restaurant in Georgia on December 25th, 2014 in the capitol city of Tbilisi.