Now potatoes are out of the ground, what happens next?

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Idaho (KIFI) - The potato harvest is underway, and already, famers are predicting a lower harvest than what we saw last year. Right now, potatoes are already out of the ground and headed many different ways, but most will head to potato cellars all over the Gem State.

Andrew Mickelsen, a potato farmer and one of the owners of Mickelsen Farms, says they already have millions of potatoes in one of their temperature controlled cellars.

"In this building here, we'll have maybe seven to 14 million potatoes just in this building alone. And you can see them all over the valley. There's going to be more and more potatoes," Mickelsen saidd.

He says the cellar has state of the art equipment that will help them store properly for several months.

"18 feet below us, underneath these potatoes, we have vent pipes about this big that shoot air and humidity into those potatoes all throughout the year, keeping them cool and keeping them moist so that we can deliver to you, the customer, a high quality product," he said.

Mickelsen says they also have a humidifier, fans and other equipment to help those millions of potatoes safe until they get on our tables. He adds since potatoes aren't grown year round this harvest needs the extra help from the cellar to make it to the next year.

"We'll get new crop just beginning to mid-August. And so these potatoes right here, some of them will need to last clear until then, but throughout the whole winter will keep emptying different cellars as demand requires. But then there will be some that will hold out until the very end. Some of them will even have to have air conditioning to keep them cool so that we can provide a great product," he said.

Mickelsen does say there are many different factors that led to the lower yield from this year's harvest.

"This summer we saw that almost 100 almost every day. It seemed like I didn't even have to look at the forecast. I knew it was going to be it was going to be highs in the upper eighties, lows in the upper fifties, almost nonstop all summer. And that actually hurt us this year, though, we started with a really cool spring that kind of delayed the potato growth," he said. "And then all of a sudden we went from that clear to just these really hot temperatures some days in the nineties, almost hundreds, and it really hurt the potato crop. This year, we expect to see potato yields down and size down a little bit. It's still a quality crop. You're still going to see great potatoes in the grocery store."

He says costs for many of the farmers this means costs will continue to rise and there are a variety of ways we can help.

"I think that it's always important that we're always looking at ways to support local. I always like to be able to support someone local that has a business in our community. I think all of us can by making sure that we're supporting the potato industry, by buying that order of fries, by enjoying that baked potato, by going to the grocery store and finding those products that are from our local area, whether it is potatoes or bread or whatever else."

The potatoes will remain in the cellar until they are needed sometime next year.