Crops & Livestock | Farm

After Nearly 100 Years, This Florida Potato Farm Is Staying True to Its Roots

When new regulators start discussing best management practices, fourth-generation potato farmer Danny Johns simply nods. “That’s exactly what Great-Grandpa did when he bought his first tractor and started Florida’s first horseless farm,” he says.

His great-grandfather Frank was well ahead of his time when it came to farming more efficiently and implementing best management practices. As Johns points out, “You don’t have to feed a tractor.”

It’s been almost a century since Frank traveled from Illinois to Northeast Florida to start a farm here and make a better life for his family. Johns, who established Blue Sky Farms in 1987, now grows more than two dozen potato varieties, from white, red and yellow to purple and French fingerlings, on 500 acres in Hastings, also known as the “Potato Capital of Florida.” A favorable climate and an early growing window, he says, result in “the freshest potatoes coming out in the U.S. every year.”

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Blue Sky Farms
Danny Johns grows potatoes at Blue Sky Farms in Hastings. Photo credit: Sarah Hedden Photography

Prioritizing Conservation

Like the generations before him, Johns is dedicated to conservation. In 2019, he won the Florida Agriculture Commissioner’s Environmental Stewardship Award.

“My contention is that farmers are the original stewards,” Johns says. “For my great-grandfather, increased efficiency was the biggest thing. How do you do more with less? How can we be more efficient on the farm and drive the cost out of the food chain?”

To address the issues of water quality and field runoff, Blue Sky Farms installed a subsurface irrigation system that eliminates evaporation, retains water belowground and sends it where it is needed while keeping nutrients intact.

“This new system has actually increased our productive land by 13%,” Johns says. “It’s a lot more effective, so we’ve doubled our production with half of the water.”

Blue Sky also supports the local community, giving away potato seeds for 4-H and school projects, partnering with the University of Florida to develop new varieties and sustainable farming practices, and hosting farm tours to educate residents about where their food comes from. In addition, Johns’ operation donates hundreds of thousands of pounds of imperfect specialty tubers each year to the local food bank. “Farmers don’t like to waste things,” he says. “We like to see the fruits of our labor going to the community.”

Potato Farming
Photo credit: Sarah Hedden Photography

Adapting Is Key

Like other growers, Johns has been forced to adapt during the coronavirus pandemic but is grateful his conventional reds, whites and yellows have continued to sell well.

“Potatoes are a comfort food, and I think people are reverting back to their roots,” says Johns, whose personal favorite is the moist, low-carb SunLite variety. “One thing I’ve learned is that in a pandemic, you need toilet paper, bullets and potatoes.”

But, he admits, “We got our butts kicked on (the purples and fingerlings) because those were going to the restaurants and high-end chain stores, so demand fell off the cliff. The one constant in farming is change, so next year, after seeing what happened with the specialty potatoes, I’m going to revisit that and maybe not grow as many.”

See more: Florida Citrus Growers Put the Squeeze on the Competition Nationwide

The shutdown will undoubtedly prompt other changes, Johns says. “This showed a vulnerability, especially with the logistics of getting produce (to market). The food was still on the farms, but when you drop that center link of restaurants, a lot of farmers lost a lot of money. To me, it was an eye-opener for the whole food chain that we need to make improvements moving forward.”

But Johns has been around long enough to know that farmers are a steady bunch with humility and appreciation for things that can go wrong at the last minute.

“Failure is not an option,” he says. “You figure out a way to get through.”

Right now, he isn’t sure who will carry on his family’s farming legacy, but he’s hopeful about that too. “My son and daughter aren’t really interested in the farm. But I’m taking my 3-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter out on a tractor every chance I get.”

Learn More

To learn more about Blue Sky Farms, visit bsffl.com.