Mission statements often live on walls or websites, but rarely do they come to life in a literal way. When the team from Canyon Falls Farms (CFF) saw the words “Thank you for contributing to feeding our world” displayed after a tour of the Simplot Potato Plant in Caldwell, Idaho, it hit home for Area Manager Tyler Lloyd, who remembers thinking “That is exactly what our mission is, and we just fulfilled that.”
For Lloyd, the words were no longer just aspirational, it was happening right there on the production line. “We grow food that helps feed the world,” he said, reciting a portion of AgReserves’ mission statement.
The evidence was neatly laid out on a table in front of the CFF team, products made from Canyon Falls potatoes: McDonald’s French fries, Wendy’s wedge-cut fries, waffle-cut fries from Chick-fil-A, and Simplot’s own Sidewinders fries that are available at Instacart and in restaurants.
Agriculture can be unforgiving as so much attention goes to what’s wrong, what needs improving, what didn’t quite make grade. But at the end of that tour on Wednesday, Jan. 14, the team was reminded of something easy to forget: their product did make grade. Their potatoes are feeding the world. And Lloyd wanted to recognize the win in the situation.
“These are well known food chains that are located all over the country and world and feed millions of people,” Lloyd said. “They have strict quality control requirements for their products, and our potatoes are meeting those grades at Simplot to be made into their products. Canyon Falls Farms potatoes are literally being packaged to go all over the world.” For the Canyon Falls Farms team, it was a reminder that their collective effort matters. Every crop inspection, every decision made in the field, every detail managed during the season helped those potatoes land on tables across the country and around the world.