TOSTON — When you eat a baked potato at a restaurant, or bite into a french fry, there is a good chance the seed it came from started in Montana.
Seed potato operations in Montana supply growers in Idaho, Oregon Washington and more, and eventually may end up on your plate.
“We are basically about two years away from a baked potato on your plate or a French fry at McDonalds,” Matthew Foth said.
Foth owns Foth Farms, a seed potato operation based in Toston. With more than 1,000 acres of certified seed potatoes, Foth Farms is one of the larger operations in Montana.
According to numbers from the Montana State University Seed Potato Certification Program, almost 10,957 acres of certified seed potatoes were grown in Montana in the 2024 crop. MSU runs the voluntary certification program, which includes testing and inspection to help produce top-quality crops.
Seed potatoes are just what they sound like--they get replanted and grow into a size that processors can use. Foth sells his certified seed potatoes to growers across the country.
“I’ve even sold seed potatoes as far away as Maine,” Foth said.
Foth started potato farming as a high school summer job.
“I really fell in love with the work and just kept with it,” he said.
In 1999, Foth started his own operation with five acres. 25 years later, that operation is still going strong.
“It’s kind of surreal,” Foth said. “I mean, I know how I got here, it was a lot of hard work, and you don’t forget that.”
Foth said the Toston area is a prime spot for seed potation cultivation—the location and cold winters help keep insect pressure and diseases low.
“It’s really our soil health, climate and isolation,” Foth said.
While most potatoes grown at Foth Farms get shipped off across the country and replanted, some of them end up at the farm’s potato stand.
The stand was started by Goth’s son Gavin when he was in high school, and today, signs along Highway 287 between Bozeman and Helena advertise the stand to passing drivers.
“After he graduated and moved on, we were kind of stuck with this project,” Foth said. “We have customers that come back all the time, so we just kept going with it.”
The roadside potato stand is run on an honor-system. Customers can drop by and pick up a Montana-grown crop to enjoy.
