Unless you’re talking about some of their specialty spuds, the Masser Family of Companies is no small potatoes, as Dave Lefever reports for Lancaster Farming.
The operation encompasses an entire potato supply chain from field to shelf, including growing, processing, packaging and shipping tubers all over the country.
The family got started in potatoes after emigrating to central Pennsylvania from Germany back in 1754, said Dave Masser, CEO of the family of companies. “I’m the eighth generation in the family’s history to farm potatoes here in this country,” Masser said.
First settling in the Reading area, the family moved a bit north to the fertile Mahantongo Valley where they grew potatoes and other produce, marketing them to communities in the surrounding coal regions.
By the early 1920s, Dave’s great-great-grandfather Charles Masser was serving retailers throughout the region, including Weis Markets, which had been recently founded in Sunbury. The potato business grew.
Through the decades, the Massers collaborated in marketing with the Pennsylvania Co-Operative Potato Growers, founded in 1922. The year 2026 will mark a century since the Masser family began working with the co-op, Dave said.
In the 1950s, his grandfather Sterman began farming on about 100 acres he rented from an uncle in Sacramento, Schuylkill County. After he bought the land in the late 1960s, the Sterman Masser Potato Company was incorporated in 1970.
Altogether, between Sterman Masser Potato Farms, Masser Logistics Service and Brokerage (a transport company launched in 2013), Keystone Potato Products (a processing plant in Hegins) and Lykens Valley Grain, the Masser Family of Companies employs about 450 people.
Source: Lancaster Farming. Read the extensive, full article here
Image: Masser Family of Companies team members. Credit Masser Family of Companies
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