Potato Heap

I toured the Cal-Ore facilities located on the border between, you guessed it, California and Oregon. In fact some of the structures, truck lots and growing fields are located right across the road, which is the State Line, from the main facility buildings and from most of the activity.

The business straddles the border. Across the divide, there are many laws, ordinances and rules that are specific to each state. Imagine keeping track of differing wages depending on if a worker is on the north side of the highway moving a pallet of potatoes to the south side where that same worker has a change is pay. That is a simple explanation for just one of the differences between the two states. Land use laws, taxes and environmental regulations are just the tip of the iceberg that this company deals with on a daily basis. And yet, they are busy every day of the year supplying our local stores with the potato varieties we have come to depend on.

Inside the sorting and packing building, workers and machinery are busy. Several ‘lines’ are running at any given time.  The number one commodity has to be the good old Russets but reds and golds are showing sales on the upswing with the organic varieties seeing greater volume in percentage growth each year.

Each line of production has machines washing and presorting before they travel through tunnels and around corners, up elevators and down, past workers as they re-inspect and re-sort before a single potato makes it to the end of the line where they are bagged and stacked onto pallets. A forklift then moves the stacked pallet to the refrigerated half of the facility where it rests until loaded for shipment to distribution centers located across the western United States. Most of the product produced at this facility is grown specifically for the fresh market with a small percentage going to be further processed into frozen, dried and ready-made frozen meals at other production companies.

The hub-bub of the packing facility is only the beginning. There are sheds, huge sheds, that hold bulk potatoes.

One large building strictly holds the organic varieties in bins made to specifically store the potatoes in the temperature controlled environment with adequate airflow around each individual spud.

Detailed information is kept on each truckload of potatoes that is brought to this complex of storage, sorting and packing facility.

Any given potato when in the home of a consumer can be traced back to when it was cleaned and packaged, where and how long it resided in the holding facility, which truck brought it to the Cal-Ore plant, when it was harvested and the specific field it was grown in.

It was an exceptional tour to see how food safety standards have impacted growers and packers of our common staple the simple potato.

During my tours this day, my Muck boots kept my feet comfy for the walking and during the standing. Please click the link to shop at the affiliate, I may make a small commission on your purchases without a cost to you. Thank you for helping support my stories