Family's Penn State Ties Are No Small Potatoes

Back in 1969, when high school senior Keith Masser began to look at colleges, he faced an uphill climb to get into his first choice— or any choice. As part of the eighth generation of the Masser farming family coming of age in rural Schuylkill County, Keith had to overcome lots of family qualms just to get out of the county.

“I was the first in our family line to attend college—no parent, uncles, or aunts,” he remembers. “There was pressure to stay on the farm and not go to college. I went to Penn State in fall 1969, and that spring the campus was shut down by riots, and students were killed at Kent State. My family wanted me to quit and work on the farm.”

By resisting the pressure and earning an agricultural engineering degree from Penn State in 1973, Masser started a new family tradition—one that continues to pay dividends for his family, their community, and the university. Today, Keith is president of Sterman Masser Inc., a family-owned operation that grows, packs, and ships more than 5,000 truckloads of potatoes annually. Customers include supermarkets, restaurants, and other outlets throughout the Northeast.

“We offer everything from one-pound packs to trailer loads of processing potatoes for freshcut, value-added products,” he says. “If it’s a potato, we offer it: white, yellow, red, russet, Idaho russet, and Burbanks in all sizes, quantities, and colors. If there’s a demand for it, we grow it or procure it.”

The Masser vision also reaches to innovation—everything from just-in-time logistical supply for local and regional supermarkets to state-of-the-art plastic shrink wrapped individual microwave potatoes. The Massers are nationwide leaders in developing dehydrated potatoes with a one- to two-year shelf life and are also researching the use of potato waste in ethanol development. Working with Penn State’s Plant Pathology Department, they’re funding research on storage and processing methods, on high-yield, high-solid varieties for potato dehydration facilities, and on varieties that resist late blight and powdery scab diseases.