Pineland Farms Naturally Potatoes rapid sales growth boon for Maine Potato growers

Rodney McCrum, president and chief operating officer of Pineland Farms Naturally Potatoes, says he is dedicated to growing the company he started with a dozen other potato farmers in 1995.

But a larger goal is to build a future for Aroostook County's young people, with high wages and diverse job opportunities that will encourage them to stay rather than leave the state for better opportunities elsewhere.

"If we want Maine to succeed, we have to do it ourselves. It's not going to come from outside the state," he says. "So we should express to these young people, 'It can be fun.' There are all kinds of success stories in Maine like ours, and those that are waiting to happen."

Farmer to entrepreneur

Since 2010, sales at Naturally Potatoes have grown by 15% annually. To accommodate the growth, the company recently doubled its storage-and-production capacity at a cost of $7.5 million, including a $1 million upgrade to the packaging line. Sales last year totaled $35 million, 25% higher than 2013 and more than double sales in 2010.

The company employs 135 workers, with 30 added since August.

Pineland Farms Naturally potatoes expects to purchase 20% more potatoes in 2015, bringing its total to 50 million pounds. Its supply comes entirely from farms within a 30-mile radius of the Mars Hill plant.

For potato growers like Brent Grass, Naturally Potatoes' need for additional potatoes in 2014 eased the impact of McCain Foods USA's decision last spring to buy 20% fewer potatoes for its French fry processing plant in Easton. "It allowed us to maintain our acreage," Grass says. He sells 60% of his crop to Frito-Lay for chips, 20% to McCain Foods USA for fries and 20% to Naturally Potatoes for mashed or diced potatoes. Potato farmers in Aroostook County produced 90% of the state's 1.54 billion pounds of potatoes harvested in 2013.

For McCrum, a fourth-generation potato farmer, the company's success validates the overriding purpose he and its other co-founders had when they incorporated Naturally Potatoes in 1995 and opened the Mars Hill processing plant two years later: to keep jobs in The County.