Keeping a family tradition alive and growing
Scott Bedlington is a third- generation grower on his family farm in northwestern Washington, located about an hour and a half north of Seattle on the coast in a seed quarantine area. Only seed potatoes can be grown in the county, and Bedlington is one of two growers doing it.
“If you grow other potatoes, here they have to go through a special WSDA (Washington State Department of Agriculture) certification program, since this is an isolation district,” Bedlington said. “Today there are only two potato farms left in this area, and both of us have been growing seed potatoes for a long time.”
Other potato farms went out of business because of new governmental regulations or struggles to adapt to industry changes, he said.
The Bedlington farm, started by Scott Bedlington’s grandfather in 1942, mainly grows specialty potatoes to sell to fresh market growers.
“We run a vertically integrated system in which all our potato seed is started in tissue culture and goes through our program in a closed-door system, grown in-house and multiplied one time on our large farm,” Bedlington said.
The process starts under a microscope in the lab, where new varieties are cleaned up using an incubator for heat treatment. Therapy protocols and meristem help eliminate diseases and bacteria.
Disease-tested tissue culture plantlets are grown to create pre-nuclear mini- tubers — the earliest generation of potato seeds available — in the greenhouse. These are multiplied in the field during the following growing seasons.
Every year, new seed plantlets are started.
“This constitutes a “flush-out” program in the later generations to ensure the cleanest, disease-free seed possible for our customers,” Bedlington said.
Bedlington said a key to the farm’s success has been finding a niche market.
“About 70% of what we grow is exclusive to us. Most successful seed farms have an exclusive market,” he said. “In years past, you were able to afford a failure here or there, but you can’t anymore. Everything has to click, every time.”
VARIETY SELECTION
Most of the potatoes Bedlington grows are reds and yellows.
“We have multiple European yellows, and a couple yellows we’ve developed through private breeders,” he said. “We also have a couple with our own trade names. Our Ruby Red is becoming popular because it is very efficient to grow. Our Cosmic Gold is a heavy-set small yellow potato, and our Violet Thumb is a purple fingerling.” s
A separate Beldington operation, Pure Potato, houses a lab and greenhouse operation where early generation seed is produced.
“I usually keep this at about 35 to 40 varieties,” Bedlington said. “These are all selected varieties in trial to see if they can meet the demands of our customers. A rule of thumb is that it takes at least five to six years to determine if a variety will make it to the market. If you are lucky, one out of 10 make it.”
Efficiency is key to making the expensive process pay off, Bedlington said, with varieties resistant to diseases common to the West Coast, including verticillium wilt, common scab and late and early blight.
It’s also important to have varieties that store well and that pack well for fresh market customers.
“With fingerlings, we like to have two reds, two yellows, and two purples, though we are always looking for something new,” Bedlington said. “The main thing is our customer base and what they need. We know their challenges, what they struggle with, and we try to find varieties that work for them.”
Beldington Farms ships about 20,000 tons of seed potatoes each year.
“Most of that goes to about 15 people,” Bedlington said. “I have customers that my grandpa started with.”
TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS
New, updated equipment has helped address labor and production issues at the farm.
“What we do in a day now used to take us a week, 15 years ago,” Bedlington said. “We’ve improved mass production, with no overtime, with much more efficiency. This is how we’ve been successful and why we are still doing it.
“My background is farming technology, and everything here is as state-of-the-art as we can make it — from seed size to planting equipment, to the GPS on our tractors, to fertilizer application systems. They are all tied into advancements of some sort. Everything is dialed into GPS and monitored, setting exact rates, and so on. This has been huge in improving our efficiency.”
Harvesting is fully automated, from digging to unloading.
New tech also helps Bedlington control and monitor irrigation, storage and equipment using cell phone apps and other advancements.
Bedlington Farms is still growing, building new facilities to handle storage and grading. The new operations are integrating artificial intelligence through automated feeding, sorting, sizing and storage tank weighing, Bedlington said.
“Trucks can pull in, get loaded and leave, and it will be a lot quicker,” he said. “Instead of 15 people standing there running a load of potatoes, there will be only two.”
Most of the storages will be switched to bin storage with an inventory and bar code system.
FAMILY-FOCUSED FUTURE
Gordon Bedlington, Scott’s grandfather, started the operation on a few acres. By the time Scott’s father, Dick, took over the operation in the early 1970s, the farm had expanded to about 250 acres.
Dick Bedlington grew the farm to almost 3,000 acres, with 800 in seed potatoes, before retiring.
“My dad and stepmother (Marlys) were both involved for a long time,” Scott Bedlington said. “She ran the Pure Potato Company’s tissue culture lab and seed farm, and my dad was the marketer, selling seed.”
Scott’s sister, Melissa, works in the farm office, along with his oldest daughter. Together, the family, which includes Scott’s three younger children, are continuing to weather challenges including increasing regulations and expenses.
“Time will tell whether they (the children) go into farming,” Scott Bedlington said. “We have all the good land we need, the water, the people and all infrastructure we need — all the investments we’ve made — to continue.
“We need our customers to succeed so we can be profitable.”
