Early autumn freeze - US potato crop (October 2019)
Oct 2019: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 2 tracked ingredients — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
An early hard freeze with record cold and snow beginning around Oct 9, 2019 hit potato-growing regions of the northern US (notably Idaho and the Red River Valley of North Dakota/Minnesota) before harvest was complete, leaving an estimated 10-20% of Idaho's crop still in the ground. The Idaho Potato Commission estimated up to roughly 30% of the statewide crop was lost to frost, and USDA subsequently forecast lower US potato output for the year (Idaho's 2019 crop down about 6% versus 2018); frost exposure also raised the risk of storage rot and bruising in harvested tubers. Red River Valley red and yellow potatoes were also documented as damaged.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- Russet potatoesDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer (reliance ~7% by value). Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
- Red potatoDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer (reliance ~7% by value). Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
Reliance is a share of import value, a rough exposure proxy, not a supply-security score. It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
No sustained wholesale move in our detected set falls inside this event's window. The event is documented; our public price series simply didn't flag a notable departure from normal for these ingredients then — an honest absence, not a hidden one.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Russet potatoes
In Russet potatoes's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Red potato
In Red potato's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
5 sources
- Growers eye crop quality after hard freeze — Capital Press
- Idaho Farmers Worry Early Cold Could Ruin Potato Harvest — NPR
- Review of the October 10-12, 2019 Crippling Blizzard over eastern North Dakota and the Red River Valley — NOAA/National Weather Service
- Red River Valley red, yellow potatoes see millions in damages — Grand Forks Herald
- Idaho potato production down 6 percent — Idaho Farm Bureau
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.