Career ap-peel: Potato farm sprouts job opportunities for Broncos

THREE RIVERS, Mich.—It may be known for the Motor City or the Great Lakes, but Michigan also boasts a tastier title: potato chip capital of the U.S. In fact, according to the Michigan Potato Industry Commission (MPIC), one in four bags of potato chips eaten in the United States was made with Michigan spuds.

While many of the state's farms have been perfecting their potato propagation prowess for decades, the seeds of successful farming are cultivated by innovation. And in farming for the future, sustainability isn't small potatoes.

Walther Farms is a prime example; the family-owned operation headquartered in Three Rivers, Michigan, is a major potato supplier for Frito-Lay and other national and global snack brands.

"There's much more that goes into a bag of potato chips than people think," says recent business analytics alumnus Skyler Thompson, BBA '24, who spent a year interning with the company.

"We're really focused on reducing our carbon footprint and being able to share that reduction with customers," says computer information systems alumnus Josh Reeves, BBA '09, MBA '21, chief financial officer for Walther Farms. "We're collaborating with (customers) to figure out where our carbon footprint today is coming from, what our baseline is and how to make improvements."

That includes incorporating strategies such as reusing water, finding alternative farming products with lower emissions in the manufacturing process and enlisting new technology like artificial intelligence to bridge the gap between modern and sustainable farming practices.

Thompson may have been green on environmental practices when he began his internship, but two semesters later he's racked up resume-worthy experience in measuring the company's sustainability goals and helping the operation run more efficiently.

"I did more of a data analysis of sustainability," says Thompson, who engaged the Cool Farm Tool, which measures greenhouse gases, water use and biodiversity, to gather metrics for Walther Farms. "Calculating total emissions is actually really difficult. When I analyzed the data, I was trying to find the missing data or outliers."

IMPACTFUL CONTRIBUTIONS

Building on the skills he honed in the Haworth College of Business, Thompson was empowered by his supervisor, Tony Macklin, BSE '03, Walther Farms manager of information technology and computer engineering alumnus, to sharpen his data analysis expertise.

"Tony's been a huge mentor to me, exposing me to actual, real-world data that applies to a company; it's much different than being in a classroom," Thompson says. "I've had to figure some things out on my own, which was intentional on Tony's part, but he's also walked me through a lot and taught me a lot about how to analyze data."

Josh Reeves, chief financial officer at Walther Farms, talks with Thompson about the key performance metric tracker he developed.

Macklin's guidance set Thompson up for success on his main project for the company, which involved developing a key performance metrics (KPM) tracker that has been implemented at Walther Farms' 17 locations across the country.

"It's not just financial and crop data; it's also how a team's doing on the farm. How is the company doing in sustainability? Or how are we doing in quality and all these different more granular things?" Thompson says. "I feel fortunate to be able to be involved in something that is used throughout the whole company."

Data from the KPM tracker is shared biweekly in meetings involving administrators from every farm to gauge performance and identify areas for growth.

"We're doing a lot of data-driven analysis on seed rates and quality. The amount of spreadsheets we look at on a daily basis is crazy," says Ryan Norton, BSE '10, Three Rivers farm manager and civil engineering alumnus.

"A big part of Skyler's contribution here has been taking something that took a lot of time for a lot of managers—people who don't necessarily have time to do it on a regular basis—and automated that work, making it all work a lot better. Now their time is maximized being able to grow the crop rather than manage the data that already exists," Reeves says.

A BRONCO PIPELINE

According to a recent economic impact study commissioned by the MPIC, which Norton chairs, the potato industry has a $2.5 billion economic impact on the state. 

One of Michigan's top producing farms, Walther Farms is focused on bringing in top young talent to keep the tradition going. And Western is yielding a bumper crop.

"Western has been an easy go-to, because we know that Broncos can clear a lot of hurdles in the interview process and they are more prepared," says Reeves, pointing to WMU programs like the Student Professional Readiness Series (SPuRS), which cultivates interpersonal skills, leadership attributes and professional competencies through co-curriculuar programming. "They're more business-ready than some of the students we see from other schools."

The hills have eyes: Those aren't mounds of rocks but treated seed potatoes ready to sprout Walther Farms' next crop. Ryan Norton, center, talks with Megan VandeGiessen and Skyler Thompson about the growing process.

Recent supply chain management graduate Megan VandeGiessen, BBA '23, started as an undergraduate intern and never left. Just a couple years later, she's moved up the ranks to logistics analyst and is taking the lead on food safety at the Three Rivers farm. Her boss, supply manager Mike Phillips, BBA '09, is also a Western alum. Reeves says he's proud to have so many Broncos on his team.

"Seth Robinson, who graduated with a degree in telecommunications information and management, is actually running a large portion of our New Mexico farm as the farm manager," Reeves says. "And Mike and Megan are … doing a lot with supply chain management, quality management, trucking logistics, all of that. And two other accounting professionals on my team are from Western. So it's really the whole gamut in all the core functions of running the business."

While the operation may be complex, Walther Farms operates on a simple motto: Growing people by growing potatoes. And it's growing plenty of Broncos’ careers, too.

"I feel like I've grown a ton just in every aspect of my career path," Thompson says. "It doesn't feel like I'm doing insignificant work, and it gives me a bit more purpose in the work I'm doing, also." ■