Warden potato grower gives spuds away to whoever wants them
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Potatoes head up a conveyor as they are loaded for delivery on Friday afternoon in Warden at Frank Martinez Family Farm's potato shed.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Potatoes are stacked to the ceiling inside Frank Martinez Family Farm’s shed in Warden on Friday.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Potatoes pile out of the conveyor, slowly filling a semi-truck bed outside Frank Martinez’s potato storage shed in Warden on Friday afternoon.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Frank Martinez motions to the mountains of potatoes behind him on Friday as he talks about the storage facility and how he’s recently been dispersing his excess supply in recent weeks.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Warden farmer Frank Martinez has been giving away potatoes with demand down in recent weeks.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Russet potatoes ride down a conveyor out of the shed and up into the back of the semi-trailer to be delivered on Friday afternoon in Warden at Frank Martinez’s potato storage facility.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Potatoes roll over the top of a trailer in front of Frank Martinez Family Farm storage shed.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Frank Martinez’s potatoes soar through the air as they head into the back of the trailer waiting for delivery in Warden on Friday afternoon.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Mounds of potatoes fill Frank Martinez’s storage facility in Warden. Martinez has been giving away and donating his excess stock.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Warden farmer Frank Martinez has been giving away potatoes as demand dwindled in recent weeks.
WARDEN — Frank Martinez has around 7,000 tons of potatoes to get rid of.
So he’s giving them away. One bag, or bucket, or truckload at a time.
“We’re just trying to survive,” said Martinez, 69, who has been growing potatoes since he was 12 and has run his own farm in the Warden area for nearly 40 years.
Martinez said with the closure of restaurants across the world in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, big potato processors like McCain Foods and Lamb Weston have very nearly shut down, leaving a lot of potatoes sitting in storage sheds like his.
“I’m looking at the future, and if these potatoes are going to waste, I might as well give away as many as I can,” he said. “So that’s what’s going on.”
Since he announced on Tuesday that he was giving away potatoes, Martinez said that around 100 people — many from food banks on the west side of the state — have come to his giant potato storage shed on the north side of Warden to get what they can.
Martinez said some have come with bags and buckets and boxes, while a few have come to get their empty pickup trucks filled with potatoes.
“I just fill the back side,” he said. “I’ve had about 10 or 12 of those.”
One worker at a Yakima medical clinic came up to get a half-ton of potatoes to share with everyone at the clinic, he said.
Martinez’s son Juan added they’ve had people from as far away as Idaho and Montana come and get potatoes.
“They’re just bored,” he said.
Mid-Friday morning at Frank Martinez’s giant storage shed on the corner of Road U and Basin Street in Warden finds him loading roughly 30 tons of potatoes into a truck, bound for use as fodder at a local dairy. The giveaways are making a tiny dent in the state’s huge, 200,000-ton potato stockpile.
But allowing restaurants to open, even in just rural parts of the country, would be a big help, Martinez said.
“I wish the governor would stop treating us like the West Side,” he said. “We’re open country.”
A second Martinez storage facility lies empty, he said, thanks to an earlier major sale to Canadian potato processors.
“Early on they had a shortage of potatoes because of the frost,” Martinez said. “Now they have plenty.”
But Martinez added he will still need the storage space this summer.
“There’s a new crop coming in July,” he said.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.
