FIELD AND GROVE MAGAZINE
Profiling Southwest Florida’s Agribusiness Community

The earthy smell of potatoes permeates the air in the Troyer Brothers packinghouse. People and machines work together to get potatoes, freshly harvested from nearby fields, into 50-pound bags and onto pallets. Forklifts move quickly from packinghouse to loading dock, loading pallets of those 50-pound bags into a trailer that will soon make the long trek to Canada.

 It’s potato harvest time in Florida. 

Aaron Troyer, 31, oversees operations for Troyer Brothers Florida, Inc., a family-owned business in southeast Fort Myers, located off State Road 82.  

“We’ve been here since 1983,” he said. “My father and uncles came down here from Pennsylvania. My grandfather and his brother started the farm up there in 1943. That’s where the seed farm is. My uncles go up there but we have someone, a very trusted person, who takes care of that part of the business for us.”   

Troyer, his father, David, and uncles, Don and Vern, work about 2,000 acres of land in Southwest Florida to produce about 50 million pounds of potatoes annually. Those potatoes are sold and shipped in Florida and across the U.S. and Canada. Some under the Troyer Brothers’ Sun King label, some are private labeled for grocery stores such as Publix and Winn Dixie.  

Troyer Brothers, one of Florida’s top potato producers, employs about 25 people full-time, year-round and as many as 90 people during harvest season, which runs from February through the end of April.  

Troyer grew up in the family business and went on to attend Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. He continued his education at the University of Florida and obtained two master’s degrees in agribusiness and agribusiness economics. He brings his education and knowledge of the latest technology to the family business. 

“As the next generation, I think you have to bring a different way of looking at things,” Troyer said. “Troyer Brothers has always been innovative.” 

That point is demonstrated by the young woman sitting at a table in the packinghouse, entering data into a laptop computer. Also, the Troyer Brothers’ tractors use lasers to level the fields before planting. And the packing line is dominated by an optical sorter, a large computerized machine that digitally scans each potato in a fraction of a second as it goes through the machine on rollers. 

“Labor’s very expensive,” Troyer explained. “We need to get more productivity per person. That’s why we bought the optical sorter. It replaced over 20 people.” 

The sorter scans each potato and sorts by size, color, imperfections on the skin – the computer allows a myriad of settings. The sorter separates the potatoes and they continue on a conveyor, where people grade and sort them before they are packed into bags.  

Growing potatoes in Florida is very different from how they are grown in northern areas. In the north, planting occurs in spring and harvest time is in the fall. In Florida, seed potatoes are planted in the fall and harvested from February through April.  

“Florida is too wet and hot in the summer to grow potatoes,” Troyer explained. “And we don’t water them from above, instead, we use a flood seep type of watering to bring the water table up and make the soil wet.”  

The recent cold snap in Southwest Florida did not have a major negative effect on this season’s crop, Troyer said. But the spike in popularity of low-carb diets in 2003 and 2004 did make a dent in sales.

“That was bad. There was noticeably less demand.” Troyer added with a smile, “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.” 

The current economy is not a major problem for Troyer Brothers, either.  

“Potatoes have good food value. You can feed a lot of people for not a lot of money,” Troyer said.  

That affordable staple of the American diet will keep Troyer Brothers farms in business for years to come. 

By Tina Giufre