Does the US import potatoes?

Yes. The US imports fresh potatoes in every month of the year, and almost all of them come from Canada. In 2025 the US imported about 415,600 metric tons of fresh potatoes other than seed, and Canada supplied 99.97 percent of that tonnage, according to UN Comtrade trade data published through the World Bank's WITS database. The rest came in small lots from Mexico, the Netherlands, Colombia and Peru. Another 67,500 tons of seed potatoes crossed, again almost all from Canada.

For scale, 415,600 tons is about 9.2 million hundredweight, roughly a tenth as much as the 99.3 million hundredweight of table stock US growers sold from their 2024 crop, by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. The trade figure covers every fresh potato that is not seed, whatever its end use, so it is not a pure table-stock number. And the flow runs both ways: the US exported about 638,700 tons of fresh potatoes in 2025, with Mexico and Canada its two largest buyers, so by weight it sells more fresh potatoes abroad than it brings in. Processed potatoes are a separate trade; frozen potatoes alone were a $1.7 billion US import from Canada in 2025, by USDA's Economic Research Service.

Where the potatoes cross

USDA Market News counts Canadian potato crossings day by day in its movement reports, and this site stores every one. Those reports logged about 7.0 million hundredweight in 2025. The customs total above is higher because the two are compiled differently; the Market News series is the one that shows where and when.

Worked example. In the 12 months to mid-September 2026, the movement reports logged 7.25 million hundredweight over 245 report days. By port of entry:

• Maine took 34 percent, through Houlton, Calais, Van Buren and Bridgewater on the New Brunswick line. Houlton alone took 26 percent, about 1.89 million hundredweight.
• New York took 25 percent, mostly at Champlain on the Quebec line and at Buffalo.
• North Dakota took 24 percent, nearly all of it at Pembina on the Manitoba line.
• Michigan, Montana, Washington, Vermont and Idaho crossings made up most of the rest.
• San Juan, Puerto Rico took 4 percent, the one sizable share that arrived by boat. Trucks carried 96 percent of the total.

Of the volume USDA tagged by type, 43 percent was yellow, 31 percent round red and 26 percent russet, so the Canadian flow leans toward the round potatoes rather than the russets that dominate US storage regions.

On the Canadian side, Prince Edward Island shipped about a third of the country's fresh potato exports by weight in the 2023-24 crop year, Ontario about a fifth, New Brunswick and Quebec about an eighth each and Manitoba about a tenth, and 91 percent of that tonnage went to the US, by Statistics Canada figures in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's 2023-2024 potato market review.

The latest daily reading on the Canada page is 39,846 cwt.

When they cross

Crossings run all year but not evenly. From 2022 through 2025, the five months from November through March carried half of the year's volume, and July through September only 16 percent. That is the shape of a storage crop shipped out of cellars after a fall harvest, the same calendar the northern US storage regions run on.

What the crossings mean for US prices

Most of the volume enters through Maine, New York and North Dakota, so it lands closest to the eastern and upper Midwest markets, beside potatoes from Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and the Red River Valley. A rise in crossings is added supply in those markets. The table above sets the latest reading against its own five-year history; this site reports the flow as USDA publishes it and does not forecast what it will do to a price. The US potato calendar covers the domestic side of the same handoffs.