The data behind the site
How to read the USDA National Potato and Onion Report
The USDA National Potato and Onion Report (NPON) is Market News's daily national roundup of what potatoes actually sold for FOB at the shipping point. Each line names an origin, variety, pack, size or count and grade, then a low-high price and usually a tighter mostly range.
Updated Aug 20, 2026
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A USDA potato shipping point report is the daily record of what potatoes actually sold for at the packing shed, quoted FOB before a mile of freight. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service runs it through Market News, a price service that has published free public farm prices for more than a century. This site is built on the potato shipping point reports, so this guide doubles as the methodology page.
Who collects the numbers, and how
The prices are not scraped off invoices or modeled. Market News reporters gather them by contacting the people who moved the potatoes, the shippers and the buyers, and confirming what real lots sold for that day. Idaho Falls publishes a daily shipping point potato report, keyed IF_FV130 in the USDA system, and a national USDA report pulls the growing districts together. USDA describes these as representative open spot-market sales reported by first handlers on stock of generally good quality and condition. They are a sample of confirmed trades, not a complete record of every lot moved, and a reported price can reflect allowances the two sides agreed to. A number a shipper hopes for but cannot get does not reach the report; a price lands only once potatoes actually change hands near it.
The National Potato and Onion Report
The daily national roundup is called the National Potato and Onion Report, NPON for short, and it is the publication most people mean when they ask for "the USDA potato report". It pulls the district shipping point reporting together into one national document, which is why a trader looking for the day's picture asks for it by that name rather than for a single district's file.
The report covers a second commodity alongside potatoes for a practical reason rather than a botanical one: both move through the same shipping districts, in overlapping seasons, often out of the same sheds and on the same trucks, and Market News has always covered them with the same reporters. The two are kept in separate sections, so nothing in one affects a line in the other, but they publish together.
What NPON gives you that a single district report does not is comparability. Every origin is quoted the same way on the same day, so a 70-count russet carton out of Idaho and one out of the Columbia Basin sit on the same page in the same basis. That is exactly the comparison this site automates: the origin pages carry each district and the weekly board lines them up against each other.
Shipping point, not the grocery shelf
The shipping point is the origin, the district where the crop was graded, packed and loaded. FOB means free on board: the price covers the potatoes on the truck at the shed, and the buyer owns the freight from there. That is a different animal from a terminal market price, which is quoted after the potatoes have already shipped into a wholesale market in a consuming city. Shipping point prices run lower because they carry no freight yet. Read the number as the price at the origin dock.
The anatomy of a line
Every potato line stacks the same fields. First the origin district. Then the variety, russet, red, yellow or white. Then the pack, a 50 lb carton, a 50 lb sack or a baled bag. Then the size, which for russet cartons is a count, the number of potatoes in the box, and for round reds and yellows is Size A or Size B. Then the grade, usually US No. 1. Only then the price, published as a low-high range and, where the sales support it, a tighter mostly range. Change any one field and you are reading a different product at a different price. A 70-count russet carton and a Size A red sack out of the same district are two separate quotes.
Read the mostly range first
- Upper Valley / Twin Falls-Burley (ID) (norkotah)
- Upper Valley / Twin Falls-Burley (ID) (burbank)
- USDA mostly / low-high range
The number to read is mostly. The full low-high range spans every confirmed sale, including the odd lot that traded cheap to clear a shed or rich for a special order. The mostly range is the tighter band where the bulk of the volume actually changed hands. The Idaho chart above draws it: the shaded band is USDA's range, and the line through it is only a midpoint for the eye, not a price anyone paid. Watch the band, not the line. Where USDA prints only a low-high, that is what the page shows, and it says so.
Worked example: one line off the board
Take the board above, the week's biggest moves. Read one row across. The first column names the origin, the variety and the count, the stacked fields from a report line. The price column quotes the pack in its own basis, a carton per carton, with the per-hundredweight figure beside it so a carton and a sack compare on one scale. The last column is the week-over-week move per cwt. That is a full shipping point quote in plain English: this origin, this pack, sold in this range this week, up or down this much.
The Russet Report quotes these prices as USDA publishes them, as a mostly or low-high range with the pack named, then normalized per hundredweight. We do not forecast where a price is going, and we never print a single made-up number in place of the range USDA reported.
Try it
Pack weights are the trade's nominal figures: a standard sack is 50 lb, a count carton is also a 50-lb unit, baled consumer bags are sold as 50-lb master units (10×5 lb or 5×10 lb), and bulk totes are commonly 2,000 lb. USDA shipping point prices are quoted per package, so the per-pound figure is the package price divided by its weight; a cwt (hundredweight) price is that figure times 100. This is arithmetic on the numbers you enter, not a quote — actual net weights and freight vary.
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Common questions
What is the National Potato and Onion Report?
USDA Market News's daily national roundup of shipping point prices for both commodities it covers, NPON for short. It gathers the district reporting into one document so every origin is quoted the same way on the same day. The two commodities share it because they move through the same districts and sheds in overlapping seasons, and the report keeps them in separate sections.
What is a USDA potato shipping point report?
It is USDA Market News's daily record of what potatoes actually sold for FOB at the origin packing shed. Reporters confirm real sales from shippers and buyers and publish them by origin, variety, pack, size or count and grade, as a low-high and mostly price range.
What does FOB mean on a potato report?
FOB is free on board at the shipping point, the price of the potatoes loaded on the truck at the shed before freight. The buyer takes ownership at the origin and pays the trucking from there.
What is the mostly price?
The mostly range is the tighter band where the bulk of the day's confirmed sales traded, inside the full low-high range. It is the truer read on the market because it drops the outliers at the edges.
How often are USDA potato prices updated?
Shipping point reports like the Idaho Falls potato report publish on business days through the shipping season, and this site rolls the origins into a weekly board of the biggest moves.