PSA report shows big strides across 640,002 acres

The Potato Sustainability Alliance (PSA) has published its 2024 On-Farm Assessment Report, and the takeaway is clear: potato growers across the U.S. and Canada are scaling up sustainable practices and measuring the results.

PSA’s latest assessment counted 474 growers stewarding 640,002 potato acres, about half of all harvested potato acres in North America, who completed the Sustainable Outcomes in Agriculture (SOA) Standard, selecting PSA as their program guide.

That level of participation gives the sector a rare, standardized view of what’s working on real farms and where the next step-change could come from.

“Participation in the PSA Program gives growers the opportunity to measure, benchmark, and share the sustainability efforts already happening on farms across North America,” said Natalie Nesburg, PSA Program Manager. “By taking part, growers not only demonstrate leadership but also help shape industry-wide understanding of what sustainable potato production looks like today.”

What PSA measured

PSA’s SOA framework evaluates six outcomes central to resilient agriculture, each rated at Essential, Basic, Medium, or High leadership levels:

• Optimal Production
• Water Impact
• Soil Health
• Biodiversity & Habitat
• Human & Animal Health
• Community Leadership

In 2024, participating growers collectively achieved an overall High performance score, up from Medium in 2023, an improvement that indicates both broader adoption and better execution of sustainability practices.

“While this is a strong result, a high score signals progress, not completion,” Nesburg noted. “There are still valuable opportunities to improve and learn.”

Where growers advanced the most

Soil Health stood out:

• 82% of growers engaged in nutrient management projects, a nine-point increase over 2023.
• 50% adopted measures to reduce tillage and compaction within the last three years, key moves to protect soil structure, curb erosion, and support root development.

Water stewardship tightened as well:

• Among farms using irrigation, 99% reported optimized crop-specific irrigation plans, reflecting wider use of scheduling tools, soil moisture data, and system upgrades.
• 58% collaborated on watershed or aquifer initiatives, up six points year over year, evidence that water strategy is increasingly a community sport, not a field-by-field one.

Why the “benchmark + feedback” model matters

PSA’s approach pairs a common, outcomes-based standard with immediate, personalized benchmark reports. Growers can see how their performance stacks up against peers in their region, then pinpoint the practices most strongly associated with higher scores. That mix of measurement, comparison, and rapid feedback is helping accelerate adoption across the value chain, from growers and agronomists to processors and retailers.

Opportunity gap: practices at 50–70% adoption

The report highlights several practices sitting in the 50–70% adoption band, and closely linked to higher performance:

• Mapping sensitive environmental areas (to guide field operations and buffers)
• Enhancing biological pest control (integrating beneficials and habitat into IPM)
• Participating in knowledge-sharing networks (cooperative learning, field days, data clubs)

PSA says it will use these insights to expand educational resources and collaborative projects, helping the middle-adoption group push toward the frontier.

Scale and stakes

Potatoes are a high-value, input-sensitive crop. Seeing roughly half of North America’s potato acres under a shared sustainability lens is significant: it aligns incentives across supply chains, lowers reporting friction for growers, and creates a clearer path for processors and brands to make credible, data-backed claims. Equally important, it helps the sector adapt to tight water budgets, climate variability, and evolving market expectations.

Bottom line

The PSA’s 2024 report marks a meaningful leap from Medium to High overall performance for participating growers, with standout gains in soil health and water management and rising community-level collaboration. It’s not victory lap time, PSA and growers alike stress that “High” is a waypoint, not the destination, but it is a strong signal that North American potato farming is turning sustainability ambitions into measurable action at scale.