How a family fleeing internment built one of America's largest potato companies
by Rett Nelson eastidahonewscom · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Frank and Agnes Wada fled internment in 1943 to start Wada Farms.
- Wada Farms is now one of America's largest potato grower-shippers.
- AI and automation have transformed operations, enhancing efficiency and workforce skills.
PINGREE, Idaho — Frank and Agnes Wada moved from California to eastern Idaho in 1943 to start a farm on 160 acres of rented ground. Today, the 30,000-acre property in Pingree is "one of America's largest grower-shippers of fresh potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes," according to its website.
Wada Farms fresh packs and ships spuds to retailers and food distribution industries nationwide. Name a retailer or restaurant chain, and chances are pretty high that it carries potatoes grown at Wada Farms.
The 200,000-square-foot packhouse at 326 S. 1400 West recently hosted a group of graduate students from the University of Idaho. It was one stop on the group's statewide potato industry tour.
During the tour, company Vice President Kip Yeates explained how the company has grown and evolved through the years. It started across the street from where the packhouse now sits. An 85,000-square-foot building was added in 1997 and was later expanded.
Yeates says Wada Farms was an early adopter of automation and was one of the first companies in the industry nationwide to use artificial intelligence to sort potatoes.
"We were a partnering force in developing the ability to use the technology to grade fresh potatoes," Yeates says. "We were definitely right out front on that. It was a challenge."
Today, as AI has become more prevalent, many have expressed concerns about its potential to replace human achievement and take over the job market.
Yeates says the use of AI has had a positive impact on the company as a whole. Although automation initially killed the company's labor force, he says it has resulted in a highly skilled staff who know how to use technology to enhance their ability to get things done.
Since then, Yeates says, "I've never had to lay anybody off," and no one misses those manual labor jobs.
"I started doing this in '77 as a cleanup boy in the warehouse and worked my way up. I don't have an education," Yeates says. "I had no desire to have my children work like I had to work, stacking 100-pound bags. We worked our butts off to send our kids to college," and Wada Farms is benefitting from that generation's efforts.
The roots and future of a farming empire
It's a stark contrast to the company's labor-intensive beginnings, when the Wadas — who immigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 1922 — came to Idaho in 1943 to escape incarceration in internment camps.
World War II was raging at the time. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order the year before, authorizing the U.S. military to gather up 120,000 people of Japanese descent, even those who were American citizens, and place them in internment camps scattered throughout the U.S.
The Wadas left their home in San Clemente, California, and relocated to Pingree. It's not clear why the couple selected that community over others or how they knew about it, but Bingham County and the surrounding area already had an established potato industry. For a displaced farming family looking to rent land quickly, it would have been an attractive place to start over.
Ironically, Idaho had one of the largest Japanese internment camps in the West at that time. More than 10,000 Japanese Americans were housed at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Jerome County between 1942 and 1945. It's now recognized as a national historic site.
The Wadas have since passed away, but their grandson, Bryan Wada, is the CEO of Wada Farms today.
More than 80 years after its formation, Yeates says the company's history has a strong growth trend, and there's no reason to think it won't continue.
"The level of innovation, the willingness to diversify and vertically integrate — all the things that afforded us the opportunity to be successful and continue with growth are in place, and who knows what's next? I imagine it will get bigger and better and more exciting things that no one's even thought of yet (will eventually come to fruition)," Yeates says.
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