From white-linen tablecloth restaurants to a local burger joint, potatoes for food service make up an estimated 55% of all potato crops sold in the US.
But according to Business Insider, American farmers are now stuck with billions of pounds of potatoes they can't sell--or easily dispose of.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of hundreds of thousands of restaurants and other cooked food outlets.
That meant potato orders to farmers virtually stopped, leading farms across the country with piles of rotting produce.
In Idaho, for example, the going rate for a sack of potatoes has gone from $12 to $3--and it takes a rate of at least $5 a sack for most farmers to break even.
All in all, an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of potatoes are trapped in the supply chain across the US.