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- New NPPB Chairwoman Gets New Strategic Plan Off Ground
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- By Jane Metcalf
Wisconsin Correspondent
As chairwoman of the National Potato Promotion Board (NPPB), Christine Anthony’s highest priority is to get a unique and new strategic plan off the ground. The broad-based plan positions NPPB as a venture capital group.
“When you think of a venture capital group, you think of someone who is a catalyst,” explains Anthony, a Scandinavia, Wis. potato grower.
As an industry venture capital group, NPPB expects to create a much greater impact on the potato industry’s future than with a traditional commodity-group approach. As a catalyst, it will provide ideas, research, the environment and inspiration for the industry to achieve common goals.
“We’ve done advertising. We’ve done radio. We’ve done TV. And they’re not effective. It’s costly, and our funds are limited. We have to represent the entire country, and we don’t have the funds to get the reach we need (with advertising),” explains Anthony.
The potato industry has a mandatory check-off program that sends $0.02 per cwt. of potatoes to NPPB, for a total of $10 million a year. This compares with the national dairy promotion check-off, with an annual budget of roughly $240 million a year.
With its new strategic plan, NPPB will focus on improving consumption of potatoes by:
• Improving perceptions of the potato’s convenience, versatility and value;
• Working in the supply chain to improve existing products and develop new ones to meet consumer demands for convenience;
• Developing non-traditional partnerships that have unlimited upside potential to benefit the industry;
• Opening and expanding export markets through country and product-specific strategies;
• Increasing exports by creating new partnerships in foreign markets and attacking constraints to potato sales;
• Establishing partnerships in meal-solutions marketing activities;
• Partnering with retail chains and product managers to initiate innovation in retail potato marketing; and
• Creating new potato menu ideas and opportunities in the food-service industry.
On the international marketing front, NPPB is stressing that U.S. potatoes have the highest quality in the world. Programs focus on reaching, training and educating purchasing decision makers, manufacturers, distributors and marketers. One new program aims at promoting fresh products in Asian markets.
On the domestic marketing front, NPPB is focusing on retail and food service markets through consumer and industry web sites, nutrition outreach, food-page publicity and chip promotions.
Creating retail partnerships is key to the domestic program. NPPB is working to develop “meal partners” with other foods, such as beef and chicken, and to work with major retailers to position potatoes in the marketplace in new ways.
“We’re looking at things like packaging beef and potatoes together and demoing quick meal solutions,” Anthony explains. “We’re trying to get retailers to put fresh-cut potatoes near the beef. Some new thinking.”
“Groups are hearing about what we’re doing and want to talk to us. The fact that we’ve had a chance to sit down and talk with the beef and poultry people is progress. They’re interested in what we’re doing,” she notes.
She also views a relationship forged with Wal-Mart as progress.
“We’ve already done food demos in some of the Wal-Mart Super Centers - quick recipes to show people that potatoes can be a quick item,” she says.
In addition to carrying out NPPB’s strategic plan, Anthony views communicating progress back to growers as a major goal. As NPPB works through its strategic plan, it may learn the marketplace requires growers to make changes in the way they do business or position themselves, and that information ultimately will help growers remain competitive.
“This is a grower-run organization,” she stresses. “Growers are making the decisions and making the plans. Yes, we have paid staff, but growers are running the show. And we’re trying to address the growers’ needs.”
Anthony is in her sixth year of serving on NPPB. She was a member of the research and evaluation committees, and she has chaired NPPB’s domestic marketing and grower and industry relations committees.
She has been active on the Wisconsin Potato Growers Auxiliary (WPGA) and the Wisconsin Potato Growers Committee and currently serves on the latter’s fresh potato marketing committee. She chaired WPGA’S baked potato food stand and promotion at the 10-day Wisconsin State Fair for several years.
She and her husband, Victor own Anthony Farms and Anthony Farms Trucking, both based in Scandinavia. Vic and his brother, Bud, formed Anthony Farms in 1965. Vic and Bud started out as fresh potato packagers for other growers.
Anthony Farms has state-of-the-art storage facilities in both Scandinavia and Nekoosa that are humidity and temperature controlled. As a fresh potato packager, they package and/or store potatoes and sell year-round for six to eight growers.
The Anthonys started growing potatoes in 1976. With the growing operation based at Nekoosa, Anthony Farms has 4,500 acres, all under irrigation. Growing 1,500 acres of potatoes each year, Anthony Farms is listed among the 100 largest potato growers in the country.
Anthony, who worked as a registered nurse for about 10 years, manages all human resource duties for Anthony Farms and Anthony Farms Trucking. With the farm packing potatoes under the Green Giant fresh label, she also manages the farm’s quality control programs and she handles public relations efforts for the two companies.
As a grower, packager, shipper and as NPPB chairperson, Anthony marvels at the changes the potato industry has undergone in the last quarter century and fully expects to see more changes in the near future.
“I think we’re going to see changes,” she says. “I think we’re going to see things packaged differently and a greater variety of potato products, for example.”
Down the road, Anthony hopes potato growers will look back at the people on NPPB at the beginning of this 21st century and view their strategic plan as one which vitalized the entire U.S. potato industry.
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