Matt Lance

Why don't we have some objective potato experts listen to both of our arguments and then make a ruling on who's right? You're going to take this to potato court. We're going to take it to potato court.

And the rules were. They could not be from the United States or Mexico, so they had to be international. They had to be potato pest experts. And then both sides would make their case, and the three judges would then do the review.

We ship throughout the country for three weeks. We have our first photos of potatoes in Mexico City. We're thrilled. We're giving each other high fives. And then the Mexican potato industry files injunctions to immediately stop all shipments to keep us out.

I love potatoes. I like baked potatoes. I like dehydrated potatoes. I like hash browns. You name it, I like it. It was a perfect fit for the food I like. Yep.

I had been, believe it or not, at the Kennedy School of Government training Russian politicians how to win elections.

You went from... That's right. I went from trying to promote democracy and political party building in Russia to potatoes. That's right.

Maybe potatoes. I don't know.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have that pest.

Oh, yeah, there's a strong basis for this.

There are border checkpoints outside of that border region, and they would stop the potatoes from going any further.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was a potato DMZ.

And they agreed that Mexico would open the market for U.S. potatoes and the U.S. would open the market for Mexican avocados.

And it turns out Mexico was looking for these nematodes a lot harder than we were. They were peeling 400 tubers trying to find, the protocol said we had to just look at the potato, look at five potatoes, make sure it wasn't there. Mexico, it turns out, was peeling all the potatoes and you can see the nematodes a lot easier.

So this is getting silly.

Yes, we've come to that conclusion a long time ago, but yes.

And it wasn't just Mexico. This was happening all over the world. Quarantine issues were becoming the new way, a non-tariff barrier, the new way of keeping any product you didn't want in your country. You would just say there's a quarantine issue and you wouldn't let it in. And that would prevent market access.

Then we found out, and this was a big discovery, Mexico has Columbia root knot nematode.