Nevada FB Annual Meeting--Day 1 THE TOUR!

Winnemucca Farms Inc., Winnemucca, NV

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Day One of the Nevada Farm Bureau's Annual Meeting began with a Tour of Agriculture in Humboldt, County, which meant a trip to Winnemucca Farms, the 2nd Largest Potato Producers in the United States.  (Did you know that Nevada produced so many potatoes?)  The land is very, very sandy here, and of course, the wind was blowing pretty bad this day, so you can see the haze across the valley, but the sandy soils mean great potatoes--which those of you, like me, who have tried to grow them in much heavier soils would envy.

This is just one of their on-site storage facilities that is currently holding seed-potatoes for the coming year.  They do grow a lot of their own potato seed, in fact, the have about 1700 acres in production in Orvada that is mainly for seed, but still buy some, too, and so what kind of potatoes they produce often depends on the availability of seed.

Our tour was conducted by this guy-and I cannot recall his name, so you'll have to forgive me that, but he is the current manager of the operation.  The picture to the left is of the air-cooling system for the storage barns, on the wall to the left are several large fans pushing air into the building.  Temperatures have to be controlled, because the potato heaps begin to produce their own heat and can cause temperatures of up to 100 degrees in a day, even when outside temps are twenty below.

Winnemucca Farms has about 20,000 acres in production right now, in three locations, this site is their largest, with around 15,000.  The have 112 irrigation pivots, ran off of 53 wells, with around 35,000 acre feet of water.  That also means that there is close to 75 miles of water pipeline running through their land.

Bob Combs, President of RC Farms in Las Vegas, wanted to take this picture for me so that I had proof I was actually there--Otherwise, I am usually always behind the camera.  This computer screen shows their irrigation set up--at anytime they can click on any one of the 'pivots' on the screen and pull up a control panel for that pivot, they can also see what direction the pivot is facing, whether it is running, how much pressure it is using, etc.  Pretty amazing!!

It wasn't horribly cold, but that wind sure could blow!  It was worth standing in to learn about the farm.  Unfortunately, we were not able to go into the processing plant because the manager was in China for meetings with the company that owns Winnemucca Farms, RD Offut.  Their processing plant does a lot of things like hash browns and french fries that are frozen and sold.  They sale a large amount of potatoes to Frito Lay for Chips, to Wal-Mart, and to a dehydrating plant in Winnemucca that turns them into flakes--their largest buyer is a producer of fish feed in Asia.

Our Youngest, Young Farmer and Rancher on the tour was not really thrilled about the wind or the tour--maybe someday!

I have to say that it is pretty impressive to see this much equipment on one farm--okay, one VERY large farm.  Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that they (Meaning owners, RD Offut) have the largest ownership of John Deere dealerships in the US?  Well, amongst quite a few other large and profitable businesses.  So, when their farms have issues, they go to John Deere for solutions, and when John Deere comes out with new tractors--well, guess who gets to try them out?  I didn't get a picture of the shop-but from the size of it it looks like they have their own mechanics shop and tire dealership to keep them running, too.

So, Winnemucca Farms not only produces lots and lots of potatoes, but they also have Alfalfa, Timothy, and Wheat on the premises.  Some of us might think this bag was stuffed full of silage--well, we would be wrong, it is full of 15,000 bushels of wheat kernels.  This is their first year storing in the bags, so they say it is a huge learning process for them that they are taking one step at a time, but due to shutdowns in transports on the Columbia River, they decided to look for new options in selling and storing their wheat and this is what they found.  There are 650,000 bushels of wheat on the premises in bags, and another 250,000 in a storage unit in Winnemucca.  They plant winter and harvest the end of summer, and say their biggest problem is getting the over 7,000 acres of wheat cut with higher than 7% moisture content.  In one week the content plummets and that is too short of time for them to get it all harvested.  (By the way, if you think in pounds and not bushels, think of 60 lbs per bushel--that's a little bit of wheat! Don't have a calculator handy, okay, I'll tell you--54,000,000 pounds.)

So, while I have to say I was a bit disappointed by missing the processing plant (Hey, I got up at 4 am and drove over 6 hours to get there in time for it!)--I really, really enjoyed the chance to go on the tour and learn so much.  I am definitely proud of Nevada Ag and it's potatoes, wheat and hay--all this time and I never knew until we started planning this meeting a year ago and looked into the potato farm as a potential tour.  A few weeks ago on my way to Las Vegas we stopped at the Chevron in Alamo and above the Frito Lay chip stand was a sign with someone from Winnemucca farms, and information proudly telling that Frito Lay gets their potatoes form them!  I think we could use a few more of those signs throughout the state and help Nevadans see and appreciate Nevada Ag a little more.

Oh, and in case you haven't ate any Frito Lay chips lately, I did buy two bags of Winnemucca Farms potatoes from Wal-Mart before I headed home--I'll let you know how our mashed potatoes turn out for Thanksgiving Dinner!