How I Became a Potato Grower
By Larry Alsum, current chairman of the United States Potato Board
I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, and have always enjoyed farm life. However, I have to confess that during high school I decided I did not want to be a dairy farmer. I grew up milking cows seven days a week, morning and night, and I knew that I did not want to do that the rest of my life. That decision motivated me to go off to college and get a business degree in accounting. When I graduated from college in 1975, I worked for a CPA firm for six years doing auditing and tax work for many small business clients and gained a lot of business background and experience. My wife Paula, a registered nurse (RN), was working at a hospital in the Critical Care Unit. Life was good.
Wisconsin potato fields in the summer.
While I was going to college and working for the CPA firm, my cousin and best friend, Glen Alsum, started a small produce business buying, repacking, and selling potatoes, onions, and fresh produce to grocery stores and restaurants throughout south central Wisconsin. The largest volume of his business was Wisconsin grown potatoes and onions. His business grew from a pickup truck with one employee in 1973 to one semi-, three straight trucks, and 13 employees in 1981; and then tragedy struck. Glen and his father, Howard, were going to fly to Nebraska to look at a packaging machine, and a local farmer with his pilot’s license was going to fly them. However, as they took off the plane crashed; and both Glen and his father were killed. This was a big tragedy for the family and the local community.
During my years working for the CPA firm in Madison, I also helped my cousin with his year-end financial statements and tax returns. I knew that Glen had worked very hard and was starting to make a decent living from the produce business. I also knew that my experience in public accounting gave me several opportunities to consider in both the accounting industry and other business enterprises. When Glen and his father were killed in the plane crash, Paula and I had some major decisions to make. Glen’s wife, Linda, asked me if I would be willing to manage the business. After a month of soul searching, we decided to leave our jobs in Madison as a CPA and RN and make the move back to Paula’s hometown of Friesland, Wis. and get involved in the produce business. At that point, I did not know a russet potato from a red potato and I had a lot to learn, but we were young and excited for the chance to move back to our rural hometown living. Linda agreed to sell us half of the business and we entered into a buy-sell agreement so that if anything happened to either of us or we wanted to terminate our employment, there was a process to follow to have that happen. We signed our contracts on May 14, 1981 and we were now in the produce business.
Larry Alsum and his daughter compete as part of the “Powered by Potatoes” team in a Wisconsin triathlon.
God has blessed us over the past 26 years, and the small business with 13 employees has grown and prospered thanks to faithful employees, customers, growers, and many business partners that we have worked with. Alsum Produce Inc. is now an integrated family of companies involved in the farming, packing, marketing, and transportation of potatoes and a full line of fresh fruits and vegetables. We are a family-owned business with many family members working in the business. I have worked full-time in the business over the past 26 years, and Paula has worked on a part-time basis. Our oldest son, Tim, is the IT manager; our daughter, Heidi, is in sales and marketing; and Chad works in the packing shed. Son in law, Mark (married to Heidi), is in our maintenance department as a millwright. Our second daughter, Wendy, has worked in the business through high school and college, as did Tim, Heidi, and Chad, but she just finished her MPA in accounting and is starting to work for a CPA firm in Madison. Our youngest son, Noah, is in second grade and helps out grading potatoes at the farm and is my ride-along companion hauling potatoes from the farm to the packing shed on Saturday afternoons during harvest.
In addition to our immediate family, we are also fortunate to have many other family members working in the business. My sister, Jan, is the controller; brother-in-law, Steve is the plant maintenance manager; third cousin, Randy, is the production manager; and many more cousins, nephews, and nieces have worked their way through college in the packing shed, office and maintenance shop. Being located in a small town (Friesland officially has 303 residents) also makes all of the employees seem like family, and the dedication and work ethic of our employees is excellent.
I hope that the above information is helpful to understand the background and history of the company and our family. We are proud to be in the fresh produce industry and our specialty is potatoes. About 75% of our sales volume is potatoes, and all of our farming activity is centered around potatoes. Remember, potatoes are America’s favorite vegetable. We grow six different varieties of potatoes on our farm and work with a network of other potato farmers in Wisconsin and around the U.S. to supply customers with many more varieties of potatoes and to satisfy our customer’s orders for fresh market potatoes. The biggest volume varieties for us are the russet, which include the russet norkotah, Freedom russet, russet Burbank, silverton russet, and russet goldrush. The red potato is our second biggest volume variety, followed by the yellow flesh varieties, such as the Yukon gold. The newest and fastest growing segment of the fresh potato industry is the specialty potato segment and we are excited about the Fingerling potatoes (such as the Russian Banana, French fingerling, Ruby Crescent, Purple Peruvian, and many more) as well as the purple and red flesh varieties.
Good farming practices are the foundation of our business, and we are pleased to be involved with a group of Wisconsin potato growers who have collaborated with the University of Wisconsin Extension, World Wildlife Fund, International Crane Foundation, and the Defenders of Wildlife to develop a strong Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and environmentally friendly farming practices. This collaboration has created scientifically sound production methods and standards that used on our farm and many other Wisconsin farms. This collaboration group has developed a brand, “Healthy Grown,” that is available at select retailers marketing an eco-friendly brand of potatoes. Alsum Produce packages and markets under the Windmill, Rainbow Organic, Healthy Grown, and Flyway brands. In addition, we pack in private labels for many of our customers. Feel free to visit our Web site for additional information about our company and the many products we offer, or to contact me.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Potato Nation,
We at the American Mustache Institute - or the mustache nation as we are known in certain corners of New Guinea and Southwest Oregon - support you and your efforts to bring the potato to the corners of the earth. We pledge that we will use our mustache-covered lips to consume as many potatoes as possible as each of our esteemed organizations pursue parallel efforts to revolutionize our culture. In closing, let me add that we are now working to collect potatoes in the shape of mustache personalities - such as the rare Tom Selleck sweet potato that was unearthed in the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1987 - to aid your effort.