Maine's congressional delegation has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buy potatoes from the country's excess supply and use them in school lunch and other federal nutrition programs.

It's been a very bad year for potato growers across the country, and Maine growers of table stock potatoes are among the hardest-hit, according to industry sources in northern Maine.

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud have joined a bipartisan group from the U.S. Congress to ask for the so-called "bonus buy" of excess potatoes in Maine and across the country.

The USDA annually buys potato products for school and other programs. The request is for more purchases than usual.

Potato growers - especially in Maine, where they have faced not only an oversupply of potatoes but also storage problems - are being left with large amounts of potatoes in storage, and the new planting season is only weeks away.

"USDA purchases of potatoes and potato products for the [National] School Lunch Program and other federal nutrition programs have been effective in easing oversupply, stabilizing prices and making more potatoes available to the consumers who utilize these programs," Collins wrote this week in a letter to the U.S. secretary of agriculture.

"This year has been absolutely miserable for growers of open-market potatoes," Don Flannery, Maine Potato Board executive director, said Wednesday afternoon. "It's just been terrible - and not just in Maine but across the industry.

"Demand has not been there," he said. "There were just no sales."

According to Collins, American potato growers are facing a negative trade balance for potatoes and potato products for the first time in U.S. history. The problems are made worse by declining demands in this country and expanding potato production and exports from Canada.

Potato imports grew by 39 percent in volume and 25 percent in value between 2001 and 2002, Collins stated in a press release.

This season, according to North American Potato Market News, an industry newsletter published in Idaho, exports of fresh U.S. potatoes have dropped by 20 percent since last year. Dehydrated potato exports have dropped 117 percent, and chip potatoes have dropped 43 percent for an overall drop in potato exports of nearly 32 percent. None of the U.S. potato shipping points has yet reached the amount of shipments made in 2003.

In Maine, shipments of fresh potatoes are down nearly 26 percent since last year. Last year, Maine growers shipped 109,000 hundredweight of potatoes. As of April 17, only 81,000 hundredweight have been shipped.

So far this winter and spring, Maine growers have dumped 770,000 hundredweight of potatoes to be freeze-dried on fields. They have received $750,000 from USDA programs, and Flannery expects another $350,000 will come.

"They [USDA] have made a commitment to pay the entire amount for potatoes that were dumped," he said.

He also expects some state money to come from Augusta. Flannery spent the early part of the week in Augusta, and expects word soon on a state program to help potato growers.

"We will get something from the state - I'm not sure how much," he said. "We were supposed to know yesterday [Tuesday]."

Flannery suspects that Maine's acreage will drop this growing season by 3,000 acres, down to 63,000 from last year's 66,000 acres.

He also expects that a few growers will leave the industry, though he doesn't expect the number to be high.