Idaho potatoes, anyone?

I just got back from a trip to Idaho to view the potato crops. This was definitely an interesting trip, probably more so than I thought it would. I'm going to try and embed a couple of videos here to help describe the process. First, a picture of a potato shed:

This shed holds 12 million pounds of potatoes. The stack is probably about 50 feet high, and you can get a good sense of how long from the size of Rick in the picture. The potatoes can stay in these sheds for as long as a year before being processed. They are moved out via special trucks, which you can see in the videos below:




The potatoes are moved to the processing facility, where things are much more automated than I would have imagined. The potatoes have their picture taken numerous times for sizing as they whisk by on belts. Pneumatic levers flip potatoes onto different belts based on size. They are hand-sorted after that for abnormalities, then bagged.







All this leads to the final product, signed, sealed and ready to be delivered!