Potato growers in Nagasaki Prefecture, the nation's second-largest spud-producing region, are pinning their hopes on a new disease-resistant potato variety, to avoid another crop shortage of the kind that halted sales of potato chips and other snack products earlier this year.
The prefecture plans to expand cultivation of the tasty new variety, which is suitable for chips and other processed products, as it expects strong demand driven by popular takeaway items such as fries and croquettes.
According to the Japan Snack Cereal Foods Association, the volume of potato chip shipments in Japan rose by over 30 percent between 2004 and 2016. That compares with a 10 percent decline in the shipment of potatoes over the 2005-2015 period, according to the farm ministry.