How much do potatoes sell for? Shed, terminal and store prices

Potatoes sell for three different prices, depending on where in the chain they change hands. At the packing shed on October 21, 2026, Idaho russets sold for mostly $23.00-24.00 a 50 lb carton of 70-count potatoes, 46 to 48 cents a pound, while grocery ads in USDA's survey for October 16 averaged $3.26 for a 5 lb bag of russets, about 65 cents a pound. In between sits the delivered wholesale price a produce house charges at a city terminal market.

Three prices for the same potatoes

• FOB shipping point. What a buyer pays for potatoes loaded on a truck at the packing shed, before freight. USDA Market News reporters collect it from shippers' confirmed sales and publish it by district, variety, pack, size and grade. Every price on this site is this one.
• Delivered wholesale. What a wholesaler at a city terminal market, such as New York's or Los Angeles's, charges its buyers for the same pack once the freight is paid. USDA reports these prices too, market by market, in its terminal market reports.
• Retail. What a shopper pays. USDA's weekly grocery ad survey averages the advertised specials at major chains, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a monthly average price for white potatoes per pound across US cities.

The shed price is the one that moves with each day's trading. The table below is the trade benchmark, Idaho russet Norkotahs in 70-count 50 lb cartons, against its own history.

Worked example: one 5 lb bag, three prices

The cleanest comparison is a pack USDA quotes at more than one step: Idaho russet Norkotahs in 5 lb film bags, sold ten to a bale, Non Size A (the smaller potatoes that go into bags).

• At the shed, October 21, 2026: $6.00 a bale of ten 5 lb bags, FOB Idaho, by USDA's shipping point report. That is 60 cents a bag, or 12 cents a pound.
• At the Los Angeles terminal market, October 21, 2026: $12.00 a bale for Idaho Norkotahs in the same ten 5 lb film bags, Non Size A, by USDA's Los Angeles terminal market report. That is $1.20 a bag, twice the shed price.
• In grocery ads, week of October 16, 2026: a 5 lb bag of russets averaged $3.26 across 2,806 advertised specials in USDA's national retail report, or 65 cents a pound.

At those prices the shed's share of the bag was about 18 percent: 60 cents of $3.26. The ad survey covers every russet 5 lb bag on special, not this one Idaho lot, so it reads as the going shelf price rather than the markup on a particular load. The chart below carries the live consumer bag quotes by origin.

What sits between the shed and the store

From the shed to the terminal market the potatoes pick up the truck freight, which USDA's National Truck Rate Report prices per load in 48 to 53 foot refrigerated trailers, plus the wholesaler's unloading, storage and margin. Distance shows in the gap. On October 21, 2026, a 70-count carton of Idaho Norkotahs sold for mostly $23.00-24.00 at the shed, $28.00 at the Los Angeles terminal and $38.00-40.00 at the New York terminal, by USDA's New York terminal market report. Per pound that is 46 to 48 cents at the shed, 56 cents in Los Angeles and 76 to 80 cents in New York.

From the terminal market to the shelf come the store's own costs: receiving, shrink (potatoes that green, sprout or bruise before they sell), labor, shelf space and margin. Large chains also buy straight from shippers and skip the terminal market, so the terminal price is one path to the shelf, not the only one.

Why the store price moves less than the shed price

Shed prices swing with the size and keeping quality of each year's storage crop. Shelf prices barely follow. In September 2025 the Idaho 70-count benchmark averaged $9.61 a carton on range midpoints, about 19 cents a pound. In September 2026 it averaged $20.62, about 41 cents a pound, more than double. Over the same months the BLS average price of white potatoes went from $1.014 a pound to $0.989 (BLS series APU0000712112).

The store sets its own price and changes it less often than a shed quote changes, and a bag of potatoes is a regular advertised special: russet 5 lb bags drew 2,806 ads in the October 16 survey. A shed price that doubles can sit inside the store's margin for a season. That is why the shed price is the closer read on the potato market itself, and how to read the USDA National Potato and Onion Report walks through one of its lines field by field.

Reading a quote

• FOB, or FOB shipping point, is the price at the shed. Add freight before comparing it with anything delivered.
• Delivered includes freight to a named city or warehouse. Compare it with that city's terminal market price, not with a shed price.
• A carton or bale price needs its weight before it compares. A 50 lb carton and a bale of ten 5 lb bags both hold 50 lb, so divide either by 50 for a price per pound.

The price per potato calculator turns a carton price into a cost per potato, or a store bag price into the same, and potato prices today carries the benchmark per carton, per hundredweight and per pound.