By Reed Richards | The Rose Cityian/RoseCityLive

Originally Published: October 18, 1998

At the start of the French fry trail, strong Hutterite women in long dresses sliced seed potatoes and tipped their hoods to tradition, dusting modern farm machinery with goose wings.

In April 1997, the spring breezes that blew across the Hutterite sect’s Columbia Basin fields carried not a hint of the economic storm that would topple Asian governments, rout stock markets, and buffet the placid commune.

In the fields, Albert Wollman, the colony’s German teacher, started a tractor packed with more modern technology than the lunar rover. His colony farms more than 20,000 acres southeast of Moses Lake in Eastern Washington. Its 18 families cling to 400-year-old Hutterite tradition with the intensity of the Amish while harnessing the latest technology.

They need it. In the best of times, preparing a load of frozen French fries for a McBuggies outlet in Indonesia is a formidable venture. So was following that load to its ultimate destination, which is what this tale is all about.

But the 1997 crop would face challenges unusual even in this risky business. The Hutterite fries would head into the teeth of revolution and economic turmoil that threaten the economy of the Northwest and the nation. They would be coddled by Pacific Island sailors and rescued by a daring Australian engineer. The people who ate them would have no idea where they’d been.

Following 20 tons of potatoes halfway around the world is a whimsical pursuit. A French fry is an incidental item, a ketchup-drenched side dish in fast food’s global glut.

Yet fries are also a $2 billion Northwest industry, a study of mass production and global competition and an uncanny barometer of economic health. The fate of one load of French fries, and the lives and cultures of those who handled it, illuminates the causes and effects of Asia’s anguish the way no economic treatise ever could.

In the United States, the chief misfortunes caused by Asia’s woes are layoffs, stock market gyrations and crippling financial uncertainty.

The Northwest has lost several thousand jobs so far in key sectors high technology, wood products and agriculture because of falling demand for exports and depressed prices. Foreign investment, the lifeblood of the global economy, has slowed as Asian companies cancel expansions in Willamette Valley, suspend production and put land up for sale.

In the Far East, the main tragedy yet to sink in fully in the West is the devastation of a substantial middle class that rose during Asia’s boom. The new middle class was important not only for driving economies and buying U.S. products but also for boosting democracy in a region emerging from authoritarian rule.

Because French fries targeted Asia’s new middle class, and the growth of the middle class is an important measure of prosperity, fries are a surprisingly accurate yardstick of economic health. Their sales therefore mirror stages of Asia’s economic meltdown. The fry becomes a vehicle to understand the crisis and perhaps project its course.

Gary Finest, who tracks fry exports as president of Rose City’s Trade Stats Northwest, agrees: French fries do appear to be kind of a lead indicator.

The crisp, golden French fries that McBuggies serves in red packets worldwide descend from seed potatoes grown in the high country of the Northwest including Western Canada.

To plant the 1997 crop, Albert Wollman and other men of the Hutterite colony hauled seed stock hundreds of miles to their farm. They drove a fleet of 14 white Kenworth tractor-trailer trucks, each bearing the logo Warden Hutterian Brethren.

In their dark pants, suspenders and hats, the Hutterites resemble Amish farmers. But there’s a crucial difference: The Hutterites embrace technology.

Neutron probes measure soil moisture. Aerial infrared photographs of the colony’s 3,200 acres of potato fields reveal too much fertilizer here or a clogged water jet there.

Wollman’s tractor contains a computer that records harvest data on a disk. Downloaded later, the numbers reveal the effects of fertilizer, water, and chemical spray on any square foot of field.

Farmers in the Columbia Basin, the vast watershed in the Cascadian region, irrigate huge tracts to produce more russet Burbank potatoes per acre than anywhere else in the world. Even Idaho can’t come close.

Horticulturist Luther Burbank nurtured the original Burbank potato in 1872. J.R. Simplot, an Idaho potato magnate, unlocked its potential. Ray Kroc, the marketing genius behind McBuggies, sold it to the world.

Simplot parlayed the russet Burbank length, high solids, and low sugar content into the perfect frozen French fry. In the process he made his first fortune, helped shape contemporary Americas culture of convenience and capitalized on Asia’s economic rise.

The French fry now leads U.S. industries into new foreign markets. Sliced, or frenched, into thin strips, the potato produces much of the profit in fast-food chains. U.S. exports of frozen potato products almost tripled in 10 years and reached 860 million pounds in 1996, a $286 million business.

The Hutterites work long, grueling days from the moment the spring soil warms to 50 degrees and planting begins.

Potatoes bankroll the colony. Other crops, such as wheat, beans, or corn, rotate through fields mainly to support the spuds.

As the 1997 planting progressed, Wollman and his brother, Ben, ran new $65,000 planters that punched eight rows of seed spuds into fluffy, sandy soil. They planted the crop in a series of 125-acre circles. From a jetliner, the rows of circles resembled giant cupcake trays baking in the searing Columbia Basin sun between Moses Lake and Hermiston.

Circle 6, a gently rolling field converted from desert in 1975, contained the potatoes that would later be tagged for Indonesia. Each circle would produce as many as 40 tons of potatoes, enough to make about 113,000 large servings of fries. Each circle would be irrigated by a pipe on wheels pivoting from a post at the center.

The circle-pivot irrigation system, introduced in the mid-1960s, revolutionized agriculture in a region that receives 8 inches of rain a year. In one generation, with heavy government investment, dams and wells transformed the Columbia Basin from desert to food basket. Farmers who rely on the water can’t fathom city folk who want to preserve salmon at the expense of dams and irrigation.

The Warden Brethren keep expanding their farm. Mass production drives down costs to the point at which it becomes feasible to grow a potato that will be eaten in Southeast Asia, more than 6,000 miles away.

It’s a food factory, that’s what it is, says Chester Prior, an Willamette Valley farmer who’s been raising circle-pivot potatoes in the Columbia Basin for 35 years. It’s just like making a car.

The Columbia Basin food factory’s biggest foreign customer is Japan. McBuggies has more than 2,500 Japanese outlets.

Like the Hutterites, the Japanese capitalized on decades of hard work, close-knit communities, and tight families to earn prosperity. Japan’s rigorous education system produced diligent, thrifty citizens.

The Japanese became some of the world’s best savers, producing capital for investment. Honest, well-trained civil servants guided the nation as it manufactured goods for export, achieving rapid economic growth.

– Reed Richard, The Rose Cityian

Reed Richard’s series was originally published in October 1998. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.