Rising temperatures are making it harder to grow the potatoes used for French fries dailymail.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailymail.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Posted on Apr 9, 2021
But new varieties are helping farmers adapt to warmer, drier conditions.
Do you want fries with that? Potatoes are a very popular side dish.
The most common potato variety is the Russet Burbank, which is mainly grown in the Pacific Northwest. But as the climate there gets warmer and drier, growing these tubers may become more difficult.
Richard Novy is with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Idaho. He says to water their crops, many farmers in his state depend on mountain snowpack, which melts slowly throughout the growing season.
“And so if we have less snowfall up in the mountains or earlier melting of that snowpack, that can impact our irrigation going into the future,” he says.