Potato Powerhouse

Some people count sheep in their sleep. Jeff Sommers counts sacks of potatoes, lots and lots of sacks. As president and general manager of Wysocki Produce Farm, Sommers oversees the Bancroft, Wis., operation, which includes 13,000 acres in five central Wisconsin counties. High-value vegetable crops, including potatoes, are mainstays for the business.

It’s a big responsibility, especially since last year the farm produced 2 million 100-pound sacks of potatoes. Sommers is no stranger to the wonderful world of spuds, growing his first crop of potatoes at age 16 while still in high school. Even though his field was only an acre, it was the start of his passion for growing potatoes.

“I picked them by hand, washed them by hand and peddled them out of the back of a pickup truck. I made $1,200,” he recalls.

“I doubled down and kept growing more every year,” says Sommers, who paid for his ag business college degree with his potato-growing enterprise. “I was taking student loan money and planting potatoes. By the time I graduated, I had 60 acres. And by my first year out of college, I was up to 125 acres. From there, I just kept expanding.”

Sommers lives smack in the middle of Wisconsin, where potato production is concentrated in the fertile central sands region. Known for near-perfect potato-growing conditions, the sandy soils allow earlier planting and, ultimately, higher yields.

Wisconsin is the third-largest potato-growing state behind Idaho and Washington. In 2014, Wisconsin growers harvested 2.75 billion pounds of potatoes.

By 1996, Sommers was up to 2,500 acres, 900 of them producing potatoes. Peas, beans, corn and other crops covered the remaining 1,600 acres.

That’s the same year his friends and neighbors, the Wysocki family, contacted him about joining their operation of 4,500 acres. In 1997, Sommers and his wife Kathy became official partners in Wysocki Family of Companies, with Sommers at the helm of the cropping side of the family’s businesses.

“My goal was to be a player in the vegetable and potato industry. My limitations were land, labor and capital. That was solved by the Wysocki offer,” he says.

Last year, Wysocki Produce Farm grew 4,000 acres of potatoes, plus green beans, peas, alfalfa, corn and other crops, for a total of 13,000 acres in production. This year, after acquiring adjacent Paramount Farms, 15,000 acres were added to the operation. And 8,700 of those acres are dedicated to potatoes.

Wysocki Family of Companies, with six partners, is vertically integrated and includes the production division; RPE (Russet Potato Exchange), which handles sales and marketing; Paragon, which operates the packaging facility; and 3,500-cow Central Sands Dairy.

“When Jeff became a partner of our operation in 1997, he brought the same drive and integrity our company was founded on,” says Russell Wysocki, CEO of the Wysocki network of companies. “Our shared family tradition of farming has allowed our company and its partners to expand operations to include growing regions across the country.”

Before any equipment pulls into a Wysocki company field, plenty of planning has taken place. Along with in-house agronomists, Sommers meets with Allied Cooperative, based in Adams, Wis., to get inputs in place for the start of planting, usually the first of April.

“We sit down with them and figure out purchases like seed, fertilizer, crop chemicals and fuel needs,” says Izaak Rathke, director of sales for Allied. “For example, based on their needs, we figure out when to buy fertilizer and at what prices. They pretty much know what they’re going to need every year; we’re there to provide it plus advice.

“We’ve put on spraying clinics with Wysocki to talk about sprayer equipment settings, adjuvants and chemicals. We take our applicators along to help answer questions,” says Rathke, who adds he likes the partnership that has developed between Allied and the Wysocki team.

When it comes time to plant, spray and fertilize, Wysocki is geared up with its own equipment. However, if the farm team gets behind schedule due to unforeseen situations, like weather delays, Allied is there to pitch in.

“With potatoes, you have to be timely. So if they call because they need help spraying or applying fertilizer, we’re there 24/7,” Rathke says. “We have the same equipment they use because we work with a lot of vegetable farmers in our region. We also help scout fields in summer and pull plant tissue samples for testing.

“We treat our working relationships as partnerships. We work side by side with our customers,” he adds. “Our co-op has grown with the potato business here.”

As potatoes are growing and weed- and insect-control practices kick in, Sommers says they’re applying something to every acre once a week. They sprayed a total of 75,000 acres last season. That volume will nearly double this year with the additional acres from Paramount.

Potatoes require high levels of fertilizer and crop protection applications throughout the growing season. Accommodating the region’s high-value vegetable crop farmers means having fertilizer available at all times. “At the co-op, we’ve added a 2 million-gallon 32 percent nitrogen tank, a 1 million-gallon 10-34-0 tank, and a 1 million-gallon ammonium thiosulfate tank. We can’t afford to run out of product for our farmers,” Rathke says.

Wysocki starts with a fall potash application and plants cover crops. In the spring, they use starter fertilizer at planting, with some liquid nitrogen at emergence. They come back 30 days later to apply a dry blended fertilizer.

“Once we get into the growing season, we’ll apply nutrients through center-pivot irrigation systems five or six times,” Sommers says. “We grow on sandy soils and don’t want to have more nutrients than we need and be exposed to loss. With our ground rig running over the crop, we apply foliar micronutrients on a weekly basis.”

The RPE sales arm of Wysocki works with growers across the country to provide a steady supply of potatoes and other vegetables to customers throughout the year.

Besides supplying fresh potatoes, Wysocki markets potatoes for the French fry and frozen product markets. Each has different requirements and uses different potato varieties.

“Traditionally, fresh potatoes, called the open market, has been our biggest segment,” says Sommers. “We sell to every large retailer in the country, including Costco, Walmart, Save-A-Lot, SuperValu, Aldi and others. Through RPE, we ship about 100 trucks a day across the country. We buy and sell out of several states.” Sales offices are located in Colorado, idaho, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, illinois, ohio and Wisconsin.

An operation this size takes advantage of all the latest technology to stay efficient and successful. Two high-tech labs are part of the process at Wysocki.

The wet lab analyzes plants and fresh potatoes during the growing season. Staff Ph.d.s work to ensure high-quality, bruise-free potatoes using advanced X-ray equipment that measures quality attributes after potatoes are washed and sized.

“At harvest, we collect samples from each field and do size and quality tests to know what we’ve got in each storage bin,” Sommers says. during the growing season, one employee manages an elaborate test-plot program where more than 100 varieties are on trial.

The dry lab takes care of analyzing soil, whole plant and tissue samples. “it’s almost like we have our own agricultural research station,” Sommers says. “We’re constantly trying to put ourselves on the cutting edge of what opportunities exist in agronomy.”

Running an enterprise as large as Wysocki Produce Farm requires a big investment in trucks and equipment. Each year, Wysocki buys three-quarters of a million gallons of fuel from Allied Cooperative to run its 60 field trucks, 15 semi tractors, 50 pickups, 40 farm tractors and self-propelled equipment.

“Our volume of business has grown substantially with Allied over the past 10 years,” says Sommers, who credits General Manager Tim Diemert and his staff for their help. “They’re aggressive and deliver on what they say they will. We look at their growth — and ours — over the past 10 years and it’s clear we’ve been on a similar path.”

As Diemert puts it, “We treat Wysocki and our other farmers as partners instead of customers. We ask them what they need from us, then we provide it in the time frame they need it. We just plain trust each other.”

Sommers also has full trust and confidence in the more than 70 full-time employees at Wysocki Produce Farm. “We couldn’t do this without our team of committed, dedicated employees who make it happen.”

On the future, Sommers is nothing but optimistic and says there are endless opportunities for the general public to learn a greater story about agriculture.

“The next steps are for co-ops and farmers to collectively figure out ways to tell that story,” he says. “We both care about our land, our people and our communities. now we need to do a better job of letting the world know we have things to offer each other.”

Besides the crop side of the business, Wysocki also operates Central Sands Dairy, a 3,500-cow partnership with Fair oaks Farms, growing the crops needed to keep high-nutrition feed in front of the herd. Manure is used in conjunction with commercial fertilizer to keep both operations efficient, including the recent addition of a methane digester to produce electricity for the dairy.

“I make sure we’re growing the right quality feed that gives our herdsmen and dairy manager the best opportunities possible to get the most milk they can,” Sommers says.

Wysocki is looking to add another 3,500-cow dairy to the operation, but must overcome regulatory hurdles before moving forward.