Episode 3: Premium Potatoes
Welcome back to Tater Talk, the podcast where we deep dive into our world of exceptional Lamb Weston experiences. I'm Rachael. And I'm Hailey. And in today's episode, we're gonna explore one of our first pillars of our premium promise, the premium potatoes. And across Lamb Weston, farmers and fields, our sole focus is potatoes.
Rachael:We always know that it's the potato's expertise that drives us to grow that perfect potato every time. Like, it really nothing else matters if we can't start with a potato. So we wanna be sure that we are all confident, knowing we are giving our customers the best because the best potatoes only make the best fries.
Hailey:Correct. Yeah. And in today's episode, we're super excited. We'll be speaking with 2 of our leading potato experts, Jeff Plew, who's our senior director of commercial quality, and Ashley Hatfield, who's our senior director of ag services for North America. So, we'll kinda dive into a little bit about them here first.
Rachael:Yeah. So I'm gonna give a little bit of Jeff Blue's bio and intro. He is seriously the guru of all things food quality. He is the senior director of commercial quality and customer support at Lamb Weston, and he spent years ensuring that the food you eat is up to the high standards. He's also nearing 36 years at Lamb Weston, which is just absolutely insane, and you'll be able to hear that in our conversation with him, his expertise.
Rachael:It's so fun hearing him go all the way back. So really excited to hear more from Jeff Blue.
Hailey:Yeah. Absolutely. And then we're also talk talking, excuse me, again with Ashley Hatfield. So, again, our senior director of Ag Services for North America. And she's has over 18 years of experience at Lamb, and she's become a cornerstone in agricultural services, ensuring that our operations run smoothly across the continent.
Hailey:But beyond that, she's just a serious expert in her field. She's got some serious thought leadership, abilities with everything ag. So we are so lucky to have Ashley and Jeff both. And to Rachael's point, you can totally hear and feel the expertise in today's episode. It was such a great conversation.
Rachael:Jeff, Ashley, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have y'all. I hope you're ready to talk all things potatoes. To kick us off, how did you both find yourselves in this line of work? Not like a big question or anything, but that's where we'll we'll sort this off.
Jeff:Yeah. Ashley, you wanna answer that first, or would you like me to go?
Ashley:Yeah. Sure. Thanks, thanks, Jeff. I'll I'll take that one. Well, first of all, thank you for having us.
Ashley:It's a pleasure to be here with you guys today. I came to Lamb Weston. My my grad school adviser at Washington State University was familiar with the company, and he encouraged me to come work in a plant. He thought it'd be really good for me to get a firsthand knowledge of the business and and take advantage of the leadership opportunity. I never expected to go from grad school to shift work, but the 2 years I spent at Cornell really gave me a good appreciation for what we do and everyone that works on the front lines every day to run our business.
Ashley:Since then, I've been a part of teams in manufacturing, supply chain, finance, and I've always been really inspired by the passion people have and the amazing things that we can accomplish together. So thanks thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to join Jeff and talk about premium potatoes.
Jeff:Wow, Ashley. That was great. For for me, I actually grew up in Eufrado, Washington, which is about 17 miles northeast of our Quincy plant. And so growing up, I knew a lot of parents, that worked at Lamb Weston. So I already had a pretty good idea what Lamb Weston was about just from growing up around, the Quincy area.
Jeff:I I went off to Eastern Washington University, and I got a business degree with a major focus in marketing. And so I came back to my hometown, and, I was looking for, you know, a role either in sales or operations somewhere. I spent a lot of time, you know, going over on the west side with interviews and looked in the Spokane area. And then, article popped up in the paper, and there was an opportunity at Lamb Weston. And so I said, hey.
Jeff:I know Lamb Weston. I never even thought about, you know, employment at Lamb Weston. So I went through the interview process. And, in January of 1989, I took on a role at Lamb Weston. So I've been here about 36 years.
Jeff:And, you know, the first couple weeks at Lamb Weston, I knew right away it was a fit. I grew up, kind of with an athletic background where I played a lot of team sports. And immediately, I was attracted to, you know, setting up teams in the plants to, you know, to reach a goal that we had set. Working as a team, all pulling from the same direction, that that captured me for for, you know, kind of kind of the background that I had with team sports and and, I, you know, I got a lot of satisfaction, working the shifts. And so I spent, let's see, 12 years on the operation side.
Jeff:And then, you know, I got I got an interest in the customer side of the business. And so the closest thing to connect with a customer was on the QA side. And corporate QA, was a position that worked with sales, worked with a customer, and it worked from operations. And what I did was I took all the knowledge from the first day I was hired all the way to the 12th year as being a QA manager at at Boardman. And I utilized all that knowledge and brought it into QA.
Jeff:And every day, I learned something new. So, that's what's kept me at Lamb Weston all these years is just, number 1, the people are outstanding. You can learn so much knowledge from just communicating with with your team, with people outside of your team. There there's just a a source of knowledge in the industry to to, to capture. So it's kept me, it's kept me going all these years, and I always learn stuff, fresh every day.
Jeff:So it's been great experience.
Hailey:Good. Well, thank you both, and, don't retire anytime soon then because, we gotta keep sharing your knowledge. And I really like that you both talked about how you were pulled to Lamb Weston for one reason or another, particularly talking about it being a team and sharing knowledge, and that's really what Rachel and I are trying to do with this podcast. So, again, really appreciate you both being on. To kind of move us forward a little bit and talk about the next piece, we were going to really cover sustainable commitment, and that's become a big pillar for us in our premium promise.
Hailey:And, we talk a lot about our potato knowledge, how we're pioneers in agricultural practices. But just from your perspective, what kind of advancements have we made and where does sustainability play a role in that?
Jeff:Yeah. Maybe I can start out first, but, you know, I got thinking about that question, and I thought maybe it would pop up, but I think really, Haley, I look back at 'eighty nine and just the irrigation that we utilized in our fields, there was no circles around at that time. And so, you had rows of water irrigating the fields. And then, you know, shortly after, you would see circles pop up. And everybody would go, oh, man.
Jeff:You're not using the entire field, you know, because the circles cut out a little bit on each side, of of the square there. And so, I just saw a lot happening on irrigation side to begin with. And then, you know, once we started the circles, the sprinkler system was up above on the circles. And so what you would see is water would evaporate up in the air. And then over time, the sprinklers' nozzles came really close to the plant, which, allowed you to utilize less water but still get enough moisture on the field.
Jeff:So, I mean, just that short period of time for the first five years I was in the industry, there was a lot of changes that took place just on our potato fields itself. So, saw a lot there. And then, you know, just the ability to, work with our growers and, set up, you know, fields to where, you know, you're you're using vegetable matter into your soil to to build the nutrients back up in your soil, and you and you use rotations. Right? And so, you're rotating your fields all the time so you're not just putting potatoes in your field year after year.
Jeff:I mean, it it it it makes for a lot healthier soil, a lot healthier potatoes in the long run.
Hailey:Yeah. And I'm curious, Ashley, if, you have perspective on that too, from the field.
Ashley:Absolutely. Like like Jeff said, Elon Weston and our growers have been pioneers in ag innovation and advancing sustainable farming practices for decades. It's been slow, quiet progress, but it's been constant. And then as we look to the future, we actually have 3 pretty exciting efforts underway right now to continue to advance progress. The first one is to reduce this, greatest source of a potato's carbon footprint, the upstream production and distribution of nitrogen fertilizer from fossil fuels.
Ashley:So I'm excited to share that Lamb Weston has recently signed an offtake agreement with the 1st green fertilizer factory in North America being built in our backyard in Richland, Washington. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. So this this plant will supply our farmers with a nitrogen that's produced using water and fertilizer or sorry, water and and renewable electricity. So, you know, there's a lot of great regenerative practices that our our farmers do from a soil health perspective, but it's really difficult to show a carbon benefit from.
Ashley:But by changing the fertilizer product directly, it prevents the emissions from happening in the first place. So it's a really impactful advancement. The second effort is adopting the Regal platform, which allows us to model, carbon emissions really accurately. So that really helps us make good sound recommendations on how to move the needle and how we're growing potatoes. And then lastly, we know that, credibility and accountability are really important to our customers and our shareholders.
Ashley:So, we've signed up with Leading Harvest, who's a third party certification group to audit our growers and validate that our efforts are truly driving progress. Thanks.
Hailey:That's a, a lot. I think that's exciting. Well, I guess, yeah,
Rachael:well, too, like, so many things that we would never know. I mean, that's what's, like, that's why we're wanting to have these conversations, but, like, that's what I was just hitting home is there's so many things that we would never know that are even happening. Like, Jeff, to your point of, like, the different water systems, like, we see the water, but we wouldn't think of how much goes into that or, like, the soil. Like, there's all these different elements that you're like, okay. I know we're an ad company, but I don't know what we're doing to try to be sustainable and how much we're consistently growing.
Rachael:So it's super cool to hear, like, all the different ways. And I know this is just even, like, a drop in the bucket of the things that we're we're doing as well.
Jeff:Yeah. And and partly our fault too. Right? Because we just go about our business every day and try to do the right things, and we forget to promote those things. And so, we've been doing a lot of things over the years, and, you know, it's all to preserve the soil and to create, you know, healthy environment and deliver high quality products.
Jeff:So
Ashley:So that really is our mission in ag services, and in that commitment spend unwavering over time is assure supply, good cost competitive potatoes that are grown sustainably. And and we have to do all 3 to be successful for the business and our customers.
Rachael:Mhmm. That's awesome. Well, I wanna shift it a little bit. I know one of the things that I think we've we've all talked about, like, at least I think is somewhat a part of, like, some potato training is that we know we take our premium potatoes and we utilize them in different ways to access them. Can you talk a little bit about the journey our potato varieties have in the certain fields and why they end up in the certain plants that they do.
Rachael:I think it's just like, we know we have potatoes, we know we make fries, and we know we have different plants, but, like, what's that journey, you know, of a of a potato to get to the plant, you know, to finally get to us?
Jeff:Yeah. That that's a really good question, Rachel. And and we could probably spend all day talking about it because we're always really excited about it. But, so, yeah, I I think we go back to varieties first. Right?
Jeff:And so we've got a lot of different varieties in our portfolio, and and the varieties we carry are are, potatoes that we can either store for a long period of time or we can run them right directly out of the field into the plant. And so back when I started, we would stop producing product in May. And so you had to wait till June July to actually start digging potatoes again. So, there was like there was 6, 7 weeks at a time where the plants were down waiting for the new crop to come on. And so, the new variety development has allowed us to bridge that gap.
Jeff:And so, we have early varieties that we can sometimes harvest, even before July and then, go direct from the field into the plant. And then, you know, we've got other varieties that store better, and they might be our long term potatoes. And then we've got, you know, short term and intermediate type potatoes where, we can utilize high quality potatoes throughout the year to deliver high quality and consistent product for our customers. And I think one thing to call out is, you know, when we when we think about potatoes, not all potatoes are created equally. And so, you've got potatoes that do very well with mother nature challenges, and then you have potatoes that may not do so well.
Jeff:And so when we start growing these potatoes, we'll sample, sample, sample, sample, and collect all kinds of data throughout the growing period. And so Ashley and her teams can select, you know, the raw product that's gonna come direct into the plants first, or we'll look at potatoes that have the characteristics that store really long, and we can utilize those potatoes throughout the year to deliver that consistent quality. I certainly don't wanna steal all the thunder from Ashley because I know she loves to talk about potatoes as well.
Ashley:Yeah. Absolutely. You're right on, Jeff, as far as, you know, the process and at Lem West and some of the advantages that we have. Right? We have, production facilities in our growing regions.
Ashley:So really local production. A potato can go from a field to a factory in minutes in a lot of cases. So it's great in terms of, being able to, be efficient and protecting that quality all the way through the factory. Our our objective every day is to deliver the right potato to the right place at the right time. And so as we think about our network and how we make the right, products from the potatoes, we're constantly working very closely with our manufacturing and production planning partners to figure out what's needed and what we have and make the best fits.
Jeff:Yeah. I think that's a great point, Ashley. I think one thing that really separates us from the competition is our ability to analyze the potatoes and bring them in to run, certain times of the year and to be able to stretch that pile throughout the year and maintain that quality. So that's that's from day 1, that has been, you know, the the key to success is managing the raw product into the right product.
Hailey:Mhmm.
Ashley:Yeah. Absolutely. We before we even plant and fill in potatoes, you know, we do the work to make sure it's the right field. We, you know, we do inspections. And and then throughout the season, we're constantly going into the field, sampling the potatoes so that by the time it's ready to harvest, we have a good idea of what we have and and what the right decision is, whether we run it directly from the field of the factory or whether we put it in storage, to utilize later on.
Ashley:We like to say that storages are not hospitals. Nothing gets better in them.
Hailey:So,
Ashley:we really make sure that, you know, we're using every lot as timely and optimally as possible.
Hailey:And I, I feel like I heard this when I started working here, and if it's a lambasted old wives' tale, if you will, feel free to correct me, but, I feel like a lot of people talk about sweet potatoes in certain regions going to a certain plant and, other potatoes going to other plants. I mean, is there do we specify on such a level of what products go through or what potatoes go to which plants for such products? Is that, like even sweets and things like that?
Ashley:Yeah. Before we contract with our growers, we have a plan. You know, every twice a year, we actually get together with our partners and manufacturers, say, what is the optimal variety for your factory? What is what are you planning on producing? How do we make sure that we have the right seed in the pipeline for the right varieties?
Ashley:And so there's an incredible amount of planning that goes into sourcing, the the seed, sourcing the right land with the right growers, and then strategically placing, those fields so that we can set ourselves up the best, with with, the decisions that we make. Suites is really interesting because there's environmental risk from hurricanes in the south. So while it might seem optimal to have everything maybe right around Delhi, it can also be risky from a weather perspective. And so there's other factors like that that play into, how we manage our our supply chain, but it's always with an eye to ensuring that we have, good quality potatoes to run all year round so that a French fry produced in June looks the same as a French fry produced in September.
Hailey:Yeah. I I don't know if Rachel or if Jeff, you have anything else to add on that. I feel like this like you said, Jeff, we could talk about this
Jeff:for a while. Yeah.
Hailey:I don't wanna I don't wanna, like, rush us along.
Jeff:No. I I always love the the question, and and we we do this often on on new, new employees that are coming up because it's in our PQ program. We always utilize the question. We say, you know, what is the perfect potato? And so when you think about it, you know, we have all kinds of products in our portfolio.
Jeff:Right? We have twisters. We have wedges. We have steak fries. We have McDonald's fries.
Jeff:And so the perfect potato is the perfect potato that matches the product that you're producing on your line. And so if you're making a wedge, it might be a small potato, but if you're making a steak fry, it's it's a quite large potato. So, yeah, we utilize all potatoes, and so, we like to think we got the perfect potatoes.
Rachael:They find their perfect match.
Jeff:That's right. Exactly.
Hailey:It's meant to be. Awesome. I think we kind of touched on a little bit, so it's a good segue actually. You know, when you talk to anybody about the PNW, maybe perhaps if you're from the Pacific Northwest, it makes the most sense. But we think and talk about our growing region a lot, and I know it's, potatoes certainly thrive in addition to other crops.
Hailey:Maybe could you touch on why that is and why they grow so well, in our area?
Ashley:Sure. I'll start with this one. You know, when you travel the world and go to a lot of growing areas, you can see, there's limits on the resources that potatoes need to grow fully mature. And a lot of fields endure stress events like drought or disease like late blight. And I think it makes you really appreciate when you come back to the Pacific Northwest, there's plenty of season.
Ashley:There's lots of sunshine. There's really suitable soils and really potatoes can just reach their potential. And there's not all those limiting factors or, challenges. Specifically, having a 100% irrigation in a dry growing environment is a huge advantage. You know, the plants stay really healthy, and they're more resilient.
Ashley:So while every potato may not be premium, on the whole, the quality tends to be more consistent, and the potatoes store much better throughout the year.
Jeff:Yeah. It's just may amazing our soil condition. It's so sandy, and and, you know, you can almost dig potatoes with your hands if you want to. So it's very nice soil, and you water it and things grow. So, it's it's, it's awesome.
Jeff:I will say out in the northwest and in my experience has been and we got plants in the Midwest. And, so when you start in the northwest and you start going to the central and and east, you you get a little bit more variability with mother nature and may not have the water control that we do. And so you do see some variability, in quality of potatoes, And in some years some years, you don't, Ashley. I mean, some years, they have fantastic crops. But as Ashley mentioned, the northwest, you you do see, more consistent raw product throughout the year.
Ashley:It's about as close to a greenhouse as you can get without being a greenhouse.
Hailey:That's a good way
Rachael:to think about it. Like, I think it, like, visually, you think about that, and you're like, yeah. That makes sense. It's like a nice cozy home for all the and it's funny, Jeff, when you said too about, like, picking it with your hands. I mean, Haley and I went out to the field not too long ago, and it is crazy that, like, you can't explain it to someone unless they've seen it.
Rachael:Like, really, you can't explain that process of, like, the farmers just out there in the the vastness of the field, but really just being able to not dig really, but you're just, like, going into the ground under a little bit of soil, and then there's just these beautiful potatoes at your fingertips. It's it's wild.
Jeff:It it's amazing. I I I do think that's why, you know, we we grow such, nice size on our potatoes is the ability to move in that soil and not stress out the potato, I think, is a huge benefit. Yeah. Mhmm.
Ashley:Jeff talked a little bit about varieties. And I think as we have such a heavy footprint in Pacific Northwest, one thing, that it exposes us to is is heat events, given that, you know, summers can get hot, and that's where we've been very fortunate with many of the new varieties that we've adopted being more heat resilient. And so we're not necessarily seeing that environmental change impact our potatoes as much as it it would have otherwise. And it's just a really good example of how, genetics can help us continue to adapt to the environment and and take full benefit of all the other good things in the region.
Rachael:And we were gonna ask this too, but I feel like that kinda lends to it a little bit, Ashley, is how storage too throughout the year can help define quality, like, and how it can help, I think, attest to, like, being able to provide quality, like, you were saying earlier, Jeff, too throughout the entire year so that we can have consistent potatoes, throughout that. Can you is there anything else y'all wanna touch on just maybe about, like, either, like, data collected or different information, that you get during the growing periods and, again, how we are able to utilize storage, to provide that quality throughout the year.
Hailey:Yeah. Absolutely. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Ashley:Yeah. Making making data driven decisions is is very core to our DNA, and we're lucky to have a lot of great data and a lot of knowledge and experience to know how to use that information. So we when we put potatoes into storage, we sample everything, and we map it out and have a really good understanding. But then we continue to go back and test for things that might change over time. So if you think about color development or defects, or just the general health of the bin, you know, we have a lot of great technology, but we also, have learned that just walking the storages using our eyes and and our noses can tell us a lot.
Ashley:So, we're very fortunate to have a team of a field staff that's well trained, to monitor storages and make sure that, we come together every week and talk about where do we see challenges, how do we work together to, make sure we're staying on top of everything as one overall network. And we've been very successful utilizing that model to, ensure that everything is, used timely, and, we don't have any issues.
Jeff:Yeah. I I think one thing I'll add, Ashley, is just I mean, the the talent that we have on on, reviewing the quality of these storages throughout the year and the technology that we have, it allows us to quickly react if we have a potato, storage that may be having some challenges. And so we have, you know, 5, 6 plants right in one small area, and you can you can go in and take care of that challenge in no time at all. But if you're a single source plant and you have a storage that maybe have some challenges in it, you know, you're, you're challenged to get to that certain area in a timely manner. So it's a huge advantage to have facilities that can work together and manage the raw product throughout the year, and it minimizes, you know, situations, that come up.
Hailey:Awesome. And this might be a full on Hailey question because I don't I'm not super well versed in this area, but it got me thinking, when I think of storage, I just think of a big warehouse, and we throw the potatoes in, and then we see them at a later date. But is there is there more more sophistication to it than that? Like, there's there's
Jeff:gotta be
Hailey:Yeah. Other things. Like, there's
Jeff:I gotta I gotta age myself again. I, you know, I gotta age myself. Going back to, when I started working, we had small storages, and there were dirt floors. And you had, like, air vents that you would open up, and, you know, those were our storages, and you had to monitor those things daily and and manage them. And then, you know, we had, we went to, like, some air.
Jeff:There were metal pipes, big metal pipes underneath with with, holes in them and and air were were put through those metal pipes to to cool down the potatoes throughout the year. And now, oh my gosh, the technology we have. We have cement floors with air vents in them with air shooting up through the cement floors, and so you have no metal whatsoever to work with those pipes, and and, the technology has grown so much to manage you know, better manage our potatoes throughout the year. It does a it does a great job cooling the pile down, keeping them at a certain temperature, and, humidity control. So, lot of lot of, lot of headway on on the technology side of storing potatoes, certainly.
Rachael:Who knows the course would be so exciting?
Ashley:They're a big deal around here. A very Yeah.
Hailey:And it
Ashley:sounds like me to sign Haley up for our storage seminar training.
Jeff:Yeah. There
Hailey:we go. I was just like, there's no way. It's just, we'll monitor them when we when we want to. No. I think it was more intense than that.
Hailey:So thank you for coming. Awesome.
Rachael:I think that's all we had for y'all. Is there anything else that, like, feel like we can't leave today without saying this about our potatoes? And y'all covered a lot, so it's okay if not.
Ashley:Yeah. I think we hit on the key messages. I mean,
Hailey:yeah.
Jeff:Yeah. I I think, you know, just the ability to know your potatoes. I mean, with all the data that we collect, all the sampling that takes place, both coming, you know, out of field in into the storages, then out of storages into the plant. There's just so much data collected, and, you know, we have technology now to where we we used to have, like, a 4 inch book that we had to go through to identify that. Now it's all, obviously, the technology that we have.
Jeff:We can pull that data, you know, in a second. But, just the ability to collect all that data and put a plan together that will last throughout the year and deliver high quality consistent product, that's exciting.
Rachael:That's awesome. Have that all at your fingertips?
Jeff:Exactly.
Rachael:Well, we appreciate the time so much. This is super exciting. And Haley's got a whole another seminar she's gotta do now. And
Hailey:Jose, I I just got assigned more tasks. It's okay. This is that's great. Cool.
Jeff:Thanks for having us on.
Hailey:Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for joining. Appreciate your time.
Jeff:Gator talk. Yeah.
Hailey:Okay. So you just heard from our 2 major ag experts, or should I say potato experts, Ashley Hatfield and Jeff Plew. And I mean, that was just really a fun conversation. I don't know how many people would, like, wanna talk that deeply about potatoes, but I thoroughly enjoyed that.
Rachael:Yeah. And I think when we said it in our conversation with them, but it's like, you just don't realize all the little details that go into it. Like we know in theory, like, okay, there's this thing, this thing, but like, I was I can't get over how excited we were over like cement floors. Like that was the end all be all of everything. Like chef's kiss to to cement floors apparently.
Rachael:Woah. But it's just cool to see, like, all those little details that go into it that, again, we would have no clue about.
Hailey:Yeah. And I think it's it's really a testament to how special that region is because they both, you know, studied in the Pacific Northwest and were able to stay there and and cultivate that knowledge, within their communities. So just, yeah, really, really powerful, experts in that area. And we're just, yeah, really thankful that they were able to to be on the show with us. So that was super fun.
Hailey:Yeah. Yeah. But that wraps up today's deep dive into premium potatoes, all leading up to our premium promise here at Lamb Weston. And we hope you all enjoyed learning about the science, innovation, and passion that goes into feeding the world. We'll say it one spud at a time.
Hailey:And of course, a huge thank you to our guest experts for sharing their wealth of knowledge.
Rachael:Yeah. And if you liked what you heard today, if you have some ideas or some people that you wanna talk to, there'll be a link, that you can put that information in. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, give us some feedback, share this episode, with your coworkers to make sure they're up to speed on our premium promise. And as always, stay curious, keep exploring, and we'll catch you next time on Tater Talk. See you.
Rachael:Bye.