Simplot

Simplot's mission statement, Bringing Earth's Resources to Life, embodies our reason for being in business: we mold many of our planet's raw materials into a wide variety of value-added products which sustain and enhance life. As part of this process, Simplot has made significant investments in environmental quality, and we constantly work to protect the natural resources without which the company could not exist. John Richard Simplot and Lindsay Maggart purchase an electrically driven potato sorter. Simplot teams up with Netherlands-based Farm Frites Beheer BV to create the Simplot-Farm Frites Global Potato Alliance. The J.R. Simplot Company is one of the largest privately-held agribusiness firms in the United States with interests in food, fertilizer, turf and horticulture, and cattle feeding. The company's growth charts the rags-to-riches rise of J.R. Simplot, an Idaho potato farmer who assembled a corporate empire around a small potato growing business to create a remarkable model of vertical integration in the agricultural industry. As one of the largest frozen potato processors in the world, J.R. Simplot produces three billion pounds of french fries each year, supplying the likes of McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC. The company is also one of the largest producers of beef cattle in the United States and the second-largest frozen vegetable producer in the world. The complexion of Idaho's economy during the early 2000s reflected the fortunes of the state's most prominent citizen. Idaho's chief manufactured good was processed foods; its largest agriculture crop was potatoes; its greatest number of livestock, cattle; its most abundant nonfuel mineral, phosphate; its principal industry, agriculture. Each of these primary segments of Idaho's economy described part of the diverse empire developed by John Richard (J.R.) Simplot, a self-described "gol-durn potato farmer" whose life charted the remarkable progression of an eighth-grade dropout into a multibillionaire. During the course of his meteoric rise in the business world, Simplot became involved in an eclectic array of businesses, assembling a variegated corporate empire that underpinned Idaho's economy and constituted one of the great American fortunes. At the heart of Simplot's wide-ranging business interests was the J.R. Simplot Company, a corporate entity that at first blush appeared to comprise a motley, disconnected collection of businesses, ranging from mining operations to potato fields to livestock feedlots. The J.R. Simplot Company, however, was not the product of J.R. Simplot's compulsion to own everything without regard for the cohesiveness of the whole. Instead, the J.R. Simplot Company's seemingly odd mix of businesses were indicative of J.R. Simplot's intent to control all aspects related to the cultivation and processing of his potatoes. Around the business of growing and processing potatoes, a vertically integrated empire developed, the magnitude of which belied the humble origins of its creator. Born in 1909, Simplot began his ascension to the top of the business world in Delco, Idaho, a small frontier town that was home to roughly ten families during Simplot's childhood. There, amid the sprawling plains stretching across the southern reaches of Idaho, Simplot got his working career off to an early start, deciding at age 14 that what lay outside the confines of the community's four-room schoolhouse held more promise than what lay inside. "I had to stop," Simplot later reflected, referring to his decision to drop out of school. "I didn't get along in school. I just didn't like it." Simplot left school and never returned, opting instead for the back-breaking field work that would fill his days for years to come. Those who knew the young Simplot discovered that whatever passion he lacked for formal education was compensated by his remarkable capacity for labor. Fortune, decisiveness, and a willingness to work would characterize Simplot's resolute march