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Former farmer uses high-tech computer industry to expand his success By DUSTY PARNELL for The Associated Press BOISE, Idaho -- J.R. Simplot is in your freezer. Those frozen french fries and hash browns in your freezer are there because of a hard-working farm kid who saw the world in a potato. That kid who grew up on a dusty Declo farm is still a driven 89-year-old and one of the 100 richest people in the world. On the one hand, he wants to own more and more land and watch his company continue to grow. On the other, he wants to feed China and educate a peaceful world with fast, cheap computers. "You can see his fingerprints on the entire state," said Bob Hendron Jr., president of Albertson College of Idaho, where Simplot, an eighth-grade dropout, has served on the board for 56 years. "He's probably had more influence on the state of Idaho than anyone else that ever lived here," friend and former Micron board member Jerry Hess said. The Simplot Company has 12,000 employees around the world and annual revenues of $2.8 billion. Yes, it is famous for its potatoes. And yes, it supplies more than half of McDonalds' french fries. But the company also is a top 10 cattle producer. There also are fertilizer plants, construction companies, ethanol production plants, lawn and garden supplies, silica sand, pet food, cheese and even a guacamole production plant. And that is the short tour. Simplot did not hit the stratosphere of wealth until relatively recently. More than half his fortune was made after age 84. Around 1980 he helped bankroll a couple of guys who thought they could build a better computer chip. "Personal computers" wasn't in the national vocabulary yet. Today Micron Technology is a Fortune 500 company and one of the major players in the high-tech world of computer chips. That is another 12,000 employees and revenues of $3.5 billion a year. "Micron, that is my baby," he said, like a proud father. At age 14, John Richard "Jack" Simplot made his first real money. He sold 21 lambs for $80. "I could do anything at 14," he said. Next he proved he could do it with hogs at a time when the market for hogs was poor. "It got cheap. I mean cheap," Simplot said. "There wasn't a market for them. It was real tough." He bought 400 head for about $400. He built a hog pen by the creek and then built a cooker to stir up some feed. Using sagebrush as fuel, cull potatoes that he could pick up for free and wild horse meat that he shot himself, he cooked up the hog feed and was in business. He sold those hogs for 7 cents a pound and got a check for $7,500. "That was a fortune back in those days," Simplot said. It was the 1920s. He was an eighth-grade dropout and ready for business. His next venture was to grow potatoes with an experienced partner. "He made me use certified seeds on alfalfa ground that had been in hay for three or four years, and we came up with a better potato," Simplot said. They heard about an electric potato sorter and went to get one for themselves. They got busier, sorting potatoes for other farmers as well, until they had a dispute. "Let's flip and see who owns it," Simplot said. "And that's how I got in the sorting business. And I never quit." The Simplot Company now produces a mind-boggling 2 billion pounds of potatoes a year. In the 1930s he also grew onions. One day, in need of money, he drove to California to collect $8,500 from an onion processor who owed him the money. He spent the morning waiting for the man to show up. While he waited he struck up a conversation with another man who also was waiting. The person they were waiting for never showed up, but before long Simplot had a contract with the man to supply him with 40,000 pounds of onion flakes and 50,000 pounds of onion powder. Never mind the fact that Simplot had no idea how to dry onions. He toured the processor's plant, saw that it used a prune dryer and came back to Idaho to learn how to powder onions. He made half a million bucks that first year. And when the demand for dried potatoes dropped considerably after World War II, Simplot realized the vast potential of frozen products. Before the decade was over, the world had frozen spuds by the bagful. In the 1960s he hooked up with Ray Kroc, who was putting together a fast-food hamburger chain. Today McDonalds is the king of burgers and fries around the world, and 50 percent of those fries come from Simplot potatoes. If you ask Simplot what he attributes his success to, he will say that he held on to his assets and never sold them. He waited for them to grow. One of Simplot's friends builds Alzheimer's care centers, and Simplot jokes about having to move in pretty soon. But then listen to him rattle off names, places and figures from more than half a century ago. A care center seems unlikely. He doesn't drink or smoke and hasn't hired a cigarette smoker for 20 years. Simplot likes to play cards, though. And he's been known to visit zoos when he travels. But the one thing he absolutely loves is dirt. "I love to own land," he said. "I've got land everywhere, and I love it." Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA