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The Schierl Tire & Service Commercial/Agriculture technicians from all eight Schierl Tire & Service locations were excited to join the Heartland Farms team recently for breakfast and a presentation on new agricultural tire technology. Since farming these days is more high-tech than ever, we learned a lot! The best part of the day was a tour of Heartland’s amazing facilities in Hancock, WI where high-tech is the name of the game. 

 

 

                                           

Heartland Farms is a family-owned farm that focuses on growing and processing potatoes, right here in central Wisconsin. They also rotate potato crops with corn, soybeans, beans, peas, carrots, etc., all grown by other local companies with Heartland maintaining the soil and irrigation. On each plot, they will plant potatoes once every 3-5 years, based on their agreements with the other farms & growers who may lease the land. Heartland grows around 10,000 acres of potatoes annually and manages around 40,000 in total acreage   - that’s about twice the area of Manhattan! Around a third of these fields are used for active growing each year. 

They have about 80 trucks and 30 tractors on site, and in the fields over 300 irrigation systems (with 14 wheels each) - that is a LOT of tires. If anything happens to any of those tires, Heartland Farms calls another local, family-owned company: Schierl Tire & Service! With so many tires involved in their growing and shipping process, it’s a partnership that makes sense. The cool part is that they know the instant they have to call our Commercial Farm technicians for an emergency tire repair. All their equipment is monitored and tracked via an active central office they call the “War Room.” 

                     

The War Room at Heartland Farms is the nerve center of their operation, and it’s one of the reasons a small but dedicated team at a family-owned Wisconsin farm can tackle such a large operation so well. Everything from equipment to soil quality and irrigation can be monitored from one place. Our tour guide, Austin, joked that they have become data junkies, but another guide, Tom, mentioned that being able to see so much operational data has helped them conserve fuel and other resources. Information on the time their trucks spend idling led to a program to automatically turn them off after 15 minutes, and that alone has saved them quite a bit in fuel costs. 

The War Room even has a screen with their current PTO calendar, so they know who is off on any given day. That way if something happens, they’re not bothering somebody on a day off. Heartland’s team is at the top of their game, and the three families the co-own the farm know how important it is to strike work-life balance. People are the heart of the company, and they know that all this modern farm technology isn’t just designed to increase production but to make life better for those working on the farm. 

Speaking of increased production, Heartland Farms processes over 1 million pounds (about 453,592 kg) of potatoes per day. There are 30-60 semis shipping out every day filled with potatoes. With that much shipping traffic, Heartland Farms puts a lot of effort into low turnaround times at their facility. Drivers should not be waiting longer than 30 minutes on site, and some will make two runs to the Beloit Frito Lay plant in one day. It takes longer to back a truck into a bay than it does to fill it with potatoes! 

Heartland even has its own testing facility where samples of potatoes being processed from different fields and batches are cut and fried to make sure they fall within strict guidelines. Heartland provides about 10% - 15% of Frito Lay’s potatoes and considering the scope of Frito Lay’s production at many different facilities around the world, that is a LOT of potatoes in not much time at all. Turnaround time from Heartland to Frito Lay to the grocery store is typically about three days. They can ship a truckload of potatoes to Frito Lay’s plant in Beloit and you could be eating potato chips made from them within the week. 

The test lab at Heartland keeps all the records that trace each potato’s lineage. They also have an on-site peeler and friers so they can re-create Frito Lay’s potato chip production process and catch any issues before the potatoes are even shipped out.  

Along with increased production and happy employees, farm technology also means that nothing goes to waste. Water is reclaimed along the way. Any soil washed off the potatoes is separated from the water using massive concrete tanks that let it settle out so the sediment can be returned to the field. Any bruised or ugly potatoes that are excellent grade are sent to one of their processing facilities to make dried potato flakes, potato flour, or pet food. 

Heartland has a food-grade processing facility on-site called Top Tier for making dried potato flakes and flour. Flakes & flour are used for instant potatoes as well as flour for breads, and thickener for soups and other foods. It's popular in the food industry because potatoes are all non-GMO. Dried potatoes are also used for processed potato crisps, like Stax and Munchos. Top Tier supplies dried potato for a surprising number of popular products. 

                       

Heartland Farms has a massive operation that is active year-round. Outside the growing season, potatoes stored in one of their huge warehouses are still being processed and delivered fresh to Frito-Lay and other companies, dried, and distributed where they need to go...all on tires Schierl Tire & Service is happy to provide and maintain. Hats off to the entire team at Heartland Farms for keeping the spuds rolling!