RITZVILLE — Potato farmers across Washington are facing an unprecedented economic crisis as restaurant demand for spuds bottoms out, with a billion pounds of potatoes once planned for domestic consumption that no longer have customers.

This, coupled with slashed contracts for next year’s crop, could be disastrous for many potato growers, said Chris Voigt, executive director for the Washington Potato Commission. Yet for some, the response has not been to bunker down, but to give to those in even greater need.

This was the impetus for a free potato distribution in Ritzville on Wednesday morning, where around 36,000 pounds of potatoes were donated to residents and food banks in just 90 minutes. The event was the first of around 20 such planned events across the state. A second event, planned for 9 a.m. Thursday morning at the Grant County Fairgrounds in Moses Lake, is expected to see even greater demand.

Though more farmers have recently reached out to add their support to the movement, Voigt said, the project started with the Wollman family of the Warden Hutterian Brethren, whose seed potatoes were handed out by the sackload Wednesday morning.

“They had all of this extra seed, and the processors cut them off, so they needed to figure out what to do with all of this seed,” Voigt said. “They’ve inspired a lot of other farmers.”

The lion’s share of the potatoes produced by Washington growers is destined for restaurants, mainly in the form of french fries, hash browns and the like, and the current lull in demand has been the direct effect of restaurant closures across the country, Voigt said.

And though consumers are preparing more meals at home, Voigt stated that won’t be a reliable replacement for those once-consistent contracts with the food service industry. First, consumer behaviors change, and the fries they might have had with a burger or sandwich at a restaurant aren’t always replaced by a bag of fries heated in the oven at home.

Even if consumer habits changed dramatically, potato processors in Washington are all designed for the food service industry, shipping out larger bags of spuds than what grocery shoppers might pick up, and in unlabeled paper bags, Voigt said. Some producers have considered making the switch to consumer packaging — only to realize that there’s a critical shortage of that type of plastic material.

But in the face of all of these system failures and potentially catastrophic economic outlooks, farmers have decided to focus on helping their neighbors, said state Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, who volunteered at Wednesday’s distribution.

“The people in the potato industry right now are struggling because the supply chain disruption destroyed their market,” Dye said. “And here they are sitting on these potatoes with no place to go, no system to get it into consumers’ hands and no way to recoup losses, and they just opened their sheds and opened their hearts.”

Members of local churches and elected officials gathered at the distribution site early Wednesday, volunteering their time to load the bags of potatoes into the cars of those who came. Residents benefited, but so too did food banks from across the region, which left Ritzville Wednesday with trunks full of potatoes that will be further distributed to those they’re serving during the crisis.

“The concern about food availability is getting louder,” said Stephen McFadden, Adams County economic development director. “You could tell from some of the folks how important a 15-pound bag of potatoes is to them at this moment, because COVID-19 has had a profound impact on individuals and their household income.”

“We always say that our farmers feed the world, and today they’re feeding their neighbors in a crisis,” McFadden said.