How is a potato grown transported and made into crisps?

Question

Hey...

I'm doing a business and enterprise coursework and i need to know how a potato is grown, how it is transported and how it is made into crisps.

With thanks,

xx Tia xx

Answer 1

Hi, Tia

Basically, it goes thus.

Huge feilds of spuds, Maris Piper varieties are best.

Duly harvested with a big machine, dumped into an on-site washer, and transported to crisp factories by the tons.

They have vast peeling machines, which actually just scrub the skins off by abrasion.

They are then shredded in another big machine, dunked in flavouring, and chucked into a big vat of hot oil. Then packaged.

You end up with less than half a spud, and a a 25gm bag of air. For 30p a bag

But at a reasonable profit through the chain of events.

Crisps, fine, I like cheese & onion, but like rice crispies and corn flakes, it is all in the marketing and packaging.

And the mind of the consumer,

If you crush a bag of crisps down to dust, you have a couple of teaspoons of spud.

They are not daft, so beware!

All the best with your studies on the subject.

Bob

Answer 2

You cut the eye (little stated sprout) off the potatoes, plant it in the ground about 4 to 6 inches with a little fertilizer, watch it grow, watering it occasionally, when the plant starts turning yellowish brown and dieing, you dig it up carefully and remove and clean the potatoes attached to the roots of the plant. put it in a burlap sack (bag) and take it to be processed. The way we make crisps (Chips) is we peel and wash the whole potatoes and slice them cross ways very thin (1/8th inch or less), they drop them in very hot grease (oil) and fry them crisp, lightly salt them and eat them, DELICIOUS!!!

Answer 3

Oh. My. God. If you don't know how a potato grows, good luck with crossing the road.

Answer 4

it is better to consult some farmers in u r region to know how to grow potatos.

Answer 5

GARNET GIVES A VERY GOOD ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION.       HAL    ENGLAND.

Answer 6

Well Tia, I think I'm the person to answer your question.  I live in Bingham County, Idaho.  70% of the potatoes eaten in the U.S.A. are grown right here in my county.  We also grow 30% of the potatoes eaten worldwide.  We grow a LOT of potatoes here!!

Potatoes are planted in the early spring, after the ground had dried out enough from the rain so the enormous tractors do not get bogged down, and after danger of a hard frost (which would kill the seed potatoes) has passed.  Large 10 weeled potato trucks (small semi's) come to the fields and fill the huge planter the tractor drags behind it (it's all mechanized now).  The semi's will come many times a day and fill the potato planter, since the fields stretch over miles and miles of land.

Bigham County is high mountain desert.  I'm at 4700 foot altitude.  Potatoes plants like to be hot during the day, but cool off a lot at night.  They grow best under those conditions.

After the potatoes are planted, they start irrigating the crops (remember this is desert).  They spray the crops several times during growing season.  Sometimes via tractor, sometimes via airplane (crop duster).  They spray for weeds and for insects.

Potatoes grow all spring and summer.  They bloom in late July, early August.  They actually smell very good, when they are blooming.

The main potato harvest starts here next week.  Potato harvest is so major around here, the public schools will actually shut down, for the next two weeks, so the children can help with potato harvest.  This is a true agricultural area!

This past weeks the farmers have been VERY busy spraying the potato fields with RoundUp, to kill the potato vines.  They wait a few days for the vines to die, and then go back over the fields with another tractor, which is dragging a huge impliment to crush the vines, so they do not clogg the harvesting equipment.  This impliment is about 30-60 huge truck  tires all lined up, on a single metal cylinder.  A bit like a steam roller, only it's wider, made with tires, and dragged behind the tractor.  If you run into a farmer driving one of these impliments down the road (really common this time of year) it will take up a tad bit more than two lanes of the road!

Once the vines are dead and crushed, life starts getting VERY busy around here.  Remember this is the desert, AND the mountains!  We have already been having snow at higher elivations.  The race is now on to get those potatoes out of the ground before a hard freeze.

Potato harvest will start early in the morning 4-5AM, depending on temperature.  As it gets colder, potato harvest has to start later, and later in the day.  You cannot dig spuds when it is too cold, as the potatoes will start to freeze in the trucks.

The tractors now hook onto the potato harvesters.  Hard to describe, but I'll try.  Basically there is a long conveyor belt made of digger links.  Those are metal, and dig down into the ground, and haul the potatoes up.  The digger links are spaced so that anything smaller than Grade A baking potatoes falls back onto the ground.  A Grade A baking potato is about the size of your fist.

The conveyor of digger links runs along, of course the vibration is terrific, which helps break up dirt clods and dump them back onto the ground.  Eventually the dried up vines, potatoes, dirt clods and some rocks make it up the digger links, and to a different kind of conveyor belt.  It looks like a giant straw, with the tip pointed down, towards the ground.  

The potatoes, vines, dirt clods, and rocks come out the giant "straw" and are dumped into the potato trucks (same trucks that brought the seed potatoes out for harvest).  It only takes a few minutes for the huge tractors, pulling the huge potato diggers to fill up one of those semis.

There will be a line of potato trucks waiting in a row, each one with it's own driver, to be the next one in line to be filled.  The farther the round trip is from the potato cellar, the more trucks there will be waiting in line to be filled by the tractor and potato harvester.  

Once the semi truck is filled, it roars out of the potato field and off to the potato cellar.  By the way, some of the people driving those semi trucks are 15 year old kids who just got their drivers liscense!  Things are VERY different in a true agricultural area.

Once the truck arrives at the cellar, it backs up to a hopper.  The hoppers can hold potatoes from 6 semi trucks.  It makes the turn around time for the drivers much faster than it was in the past.  The bottom of the floor of the semi truck is a giant rubber covered conveyor belt, from front to back.  There is a small door at the back of the semi truck, about 1/2 the size of a door on a person's house.  That door opens up, the conveyor belt starts, and the potatoes pour out into the hopper.  It only takes minutes (about 2) to empty the entire truck, and it roars back to the field, for it's next load of potatoes.

The potato hopper feeds multiple conver belts.  One is going strait into the depths of the potato cellar, and two others off to the sides.  Workers (many from Mexico, and many local people) stand all day long in the sun, rain, sometimes snow...whatever the weather is outside.  The shifts are usually 12 hours at least.  Anyway, they stand there, and "pick potatoes."  They pick out any rotten, serriously damaged, too large potatoes, the vines, rocks, and dirt clods.  They toss those onto the other conveyor belts.  Those are carried off the the sides and huge piles of waste begin to build up.

The other part begins to fill the potato celler.  Pipes with holes are laid, as the cellar fills.  Potatoes are poured in around those pipes.  Air will be blown through those pipes, to help keep potatoes from getting too cold, and from being too wet and rotting into mush.

Once potato harvest swings into full gear, farmers pray for NO rain, and that the really bitter cold weather will hold off.  While the weather is good, and the temperatures staying above freezing, they will actually dig potatoes at night too.  Sometimes everything will be running 24 hours a day.  It's vital to get those potatoes dug while the temperature is good.  Rain can be a tremendous problem too.  If it rains, the semi trucks (sometimes but not usually) the tractor will get bogged down.  Precious time is wasted trying to dig the machines out.  It also make for a LOT more dirt clods being pulled out of the ground.  This can mean litterally tons of top soil lost by the farmer, and dumped at the cellars.

Now I'm afraid for me to finish answering this, you will have to tell me what a crips is?  I'm guessing potato chip.  We make everything here at the potato plants, from potato chips, deyhdrated potatoes of all kinds, the french fries used by the fast food places, the hunks of potatoes used in canned soups.....even the "snow" Hollywood uses!!!  Tell me what a crisp is, and I'll tell you what we do to make it.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Livin' in the heart of potato country.

Answer 7

An interesting questions - potatoes are first picked, then sent to a Mr Walker in Leicester who turns them into crisps

Answer 8

Seed potatoes are planted in a prepared field, grown to maturity and harvested. Transportation to processing plants is by lorry.

First the potatoes are dumped into a bath and washed. Then they are lifted to the peeler. The peeler is not the modest little metal potato peeler you use in your kitchen. The peeler is a long cylinder with rollers that revolve around and around stripping the potato of its skin. The peeled potatoes then empty unto an inspection table where inspectors look for defects in the potatoes to remove.

Then the potatoes move to a slicer that looks like something out of a scary monster movie. The slicer features eight sharp blades held upright in a ring. In the center of this ring is a revolving plate. One by one the potatoes drop upon this revolving plates. Over and over the spinning plates throw the potatoes against the revolving blades to remove slices from the potatoes. Generally these slices are 1/20 of an inch.

These newly made slices are carried to the fryer while being washed and dried. Hot oil and slices are put in the back of the fryer together. (The fryer is a long shallow trough.) While cooking the chips, the hot oil pushes them from the back of the trough to the front where they are carried off by conveyor belt.

A conveyor lifts the chip out of the oil. Then workers salt, season and inspect them. A conveyor belt carries them to machines where they are packaged. Those packages arrive at your grocery or convenience stores.

Answer 9

its done by a machine of course your so fick

Answer 10

Tia, I grow my potatoes roughly 20cm (8") deep & 45cm (18") apart. Keep them well watered and check for 'blight' ( the disease that caused the Irish famine). There are three types:- Earlies (planted October); Maincrop (planted November) and Late (planted Jan-March). I harvest from May to November, depending on variety (which are numerous!).

Transport them in a hessian or paper sack, keep dry and in the dark.  Wash & peel, then shave with a peeler, drop into hot, deep oil until brown, take out & drain, season & eat. Just scale up for main line production ie:- fields, lorries, mechanisation, packaging & delivery ... simple. Good luck with your studies.

Answer 11

Does'nt take a genious.

Use your logic.

Answer 12

Soil gets prepared.Seed planted in soil.Seed grows into potato.Potato is dug when mature.Transported from field to factory by lorry.Peeled,sliced,cooked in oil then bagged ready for your enjoyment.Lorried to shops.