Writings - Freelance Articles
Spud Success - Everything’s Coming Up Tubers for the Styma Family
Country Lines Magazine - October 11, 1999
Walking through the deeply furrowed fields north of Posen, you can smell the faintly sweet, faintly sharp smell of crushed potatoes before you can actually spot them underfoot.
The smell grows more intense as you approach the giant green harvester churning up the rows of low-lying plants, until it’s blocked by the dust thrown up by the harvester’s passing.
It’s harvest time at the Styma farm, and the harvester will be running as long as it’s light for seven weeks straight. The Stymas themselves put in 14-hour days keeping the harvester running, along with the trucks that ferry the spuds to a cavernous storage shed and then on to markets across six states.
After 40 years of pulling potatoes from the ground, the Styma family has spud farming down to a science. That’s a good thing, since not all the farmers in Presque Isle County have been so successful.
“In the last 10 years, the number of farms has been cut in half in this area,” said Erwin Styma Jr. “Depressed potato prices and fickle buyers have driven a lot of people out.”
One of those people was Erwin’s brother Bill, who had his own farm separate from the family operation until the tough times got the better of him. He’s since unloaded his equipment and sold his storage facilities to Erwin Jr., his brother Randy and his father, Erwin Sr., and now works for them.
Farms still occupy about 20 percent of the land in Presque Isle County, with the farming about equally divided between crops and livestock. In 1998, county farmers harvested 30,000 tons of potatoes off 2,400 acres. Though the county is not one of the state’s largest potato producers—that honor belongs to Montcalm, St. Joseph, and Bay counties—Presque Isle’s crop helped the state rank ninth in the nation’s potato production that year.
The Stymas provided many of those potatoes, and should provide even more in 1999. Erwin estimated that the family would harvest about 12,000 tons of potatoes this year.
Like their counterparts in other counties, Presque Isle farmers have been hurt by dry seasons in recent years, with those who don’t have irrigated fields hurt the most. The Stymas, who have 80 percent of their fields irrigated, were better-prepared for the drought than many other farmers. While others were selling off their farmland, the Stymas were buying.
The family is also looking toward technology to keep the business growing, building sheds to house state-of-the-art potato sizers that will use computers and electronic eyes to measure each spud accurately and sort them by size and shape.
“A lot of people are demanding that the potatoes be sized perfectly,” Erwin explained as he showed a visitor around. “We think we can be pretty successful as long as our quality is good. ... “We’re just trying to open up some new doors.”
Out in the field, brother Randy piloted the huge green harvester down a field, as father Erwin Sr. drove a truck alongside. A chute lifted the potatoes onto a conveyer belt system which separates rocks and clods of dirt into one bin while carrying the potatoes around the harvester. They eventually dropped into the bed of the truck, but not before passing by the watchful eye of teenager Angela Schultz, who sat beside a conveyer belt grabbing errant clumps of dirt from among the potatoes and tossing them to the side. A painter’s mask helped her breathe as the harvester kicked up clouds of dust.
During one of his occasional stops to clear the chute of debris, Randy explained that the harvester is capable of collecting up to 100 tons of potatoes an hour under perfect conditions. He estimated their harvesting rate at 50 to 60 tons an hour that afternoon.
He was happy with the day’s progress, though, and with the field’s production.
“We were planning on about 35,000 pounds per acre, and we’re taking in about 40,000 on this particular field,” he said.
Back across the road, trucks full of potatoes were lined up side-by-side waiting to be backed up to another conveyer belt system—this one used to filter out the smaller spuds and move the others into the Stymas’ storage shed until they are washed and shipped to market. The small potatoes go to a cannery in East Jordan.
“It works out pretty well, because when they get done canning cherries, we come in with the potatoes,” Erwin said.
The sorter itself is named “Spudnik,” and its inventor gave the device its name in recognition of the 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite and in an attempt to link his product with the technological advance that the satellite represented.
Along with sufficient irrigation, good electrical service is part of what keeps the operation running, and the Stymas are pleased with their service from Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-op. The co-op even helped the Stymas’ irrigation plans succeed, Erwin recalled.
“We buy a lot of electricity from them. ... not only for our farms and our storage areas, but also for our irrigation wells,” he said. “We’re involved with them in a lot of different ways. There was a situation where we wanted a power line moved and for a decent fee they went out and moved our power poles and a whole line for us so our irrigation system could come through.”
If it weren’t for his mother’s distaste for cows, the Stymas could just as easily have been selling milk instead of potatoes, according to Erwin.
Erwin Sr.’s family had a dairy farm decades ago, but his wife was no fan of cattle, his son said.
“He just looked around and saw potatoes as an opportunity to farm but not necessarily be in the cattle business. ... Times were pretty tough at first, but now and again they’d hit a little bit better a year, and things just kept progressing.”
They’ve progressed to the point where the Stymas ship their spuds to states from Michigan to Maryland, with the potatoes ending up on the shelves of supermarkets including Meijer, Kroger, Farmer Jack and A&P.
With three trucks and trailers, the Stymas also have their own trucking business. The family trucks 60 to 70 percent of their own potatoes, to retailers in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, while hiring other trucking firms to haul to destinations farther east.
The trucking business is just another way that the Stymas make sure their crop is delivered in good condition and on time.
“We’re just trying to do a better job,” Erwin said.