How This Young Vegetable Grower Found Her Way To Success

By Carol Miller|January 10, 2024

Starting a new job is fraught with insecurities along with excitement. So much promise — and the pressure to live up to that. In farming families, there’s a bit more job security. But you add in finding your place when your parents and siblings have managed on their own without you up to that point. “When you initially come back, and you’re working with your parents, you can sometimes still be in that parent-to-child pattern dynamic,” says Amber Vander Dussen, part of the fourth generation on LaSalle, CO-based Strohauer Farms for about a decade now. “I think it really takes time to figure out your groove and grow into your relationship as adults working together in a work environment, not just in a family environment.”

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Strohauer Farms is growing shallots as well as its core potato crop. Amber Vander Dussen [shown here] says its later harvest date dovetails nicely with the potatoes.
Photo by Carol Miller
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The Strohauer family grows both organic and conventional potatoes and onions.
Photo by Carol Miller
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A colorful harvest of fingerling potatoes at Strohauer Farms.
Photo by Carol Miller
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Strohauer Farms uses Sev-Rend’s Bio-Able packaging, which fully degrades within 18 months, leaving behind no micro-plastic waste.
Photo by Carol Miller
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Amber Vander Dussen brings her daughter to work with her regularly, giving her a farming foundation from an early age.
Photo: Strohauer Farms / Kim Desmond

All of Vander Dussen’s siblings and her parents work on the farm today. Strohauer Farms mainly grows fresh market potatoes.

“Our roles are always kind of changing and merging into whatever we need at the farm,” she says.

Vander Dussen’s current roles include overseeing the packing warehouse, sales and marketing, food safety, some of the human resource tasks (including H-2A), and working closely with operations near Dalhart, TX, an area where New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas borders meet.

Although Vander Dussen grew up on the farm, she had other interests and didn’t learn the ropes. Even in college, she leaned toward a legal career.

Leadership Training

Although Vander Dussen participated in various leadership groups throughout her school years, agriculture demands a unique skill set. So she set out to find quality training where she could.

“My husband worked in agriculture pretty heavily as a young kid and teenager. So, when he came back to [his family’s] dairy, he had a good sense of where his skill set lie,” she says.

Vander Dussen’s parents, Harry and Katie, never pressured her to pin her future to the farm. When she finally decided that’s where she belonged, she had work to do.

That meant training and seeing where her existing skills could apply. Some of the training was informal. Not only from her family, but also from nearby growers like Robert Sakata, who is currently serving as Colorado’s first Agricultural Water Policy Advisor.

“When I first came back to the farm, Robert spent a lot of time with me and was really generous with his time. It was wonderful to have someone in my corner.”

She also took advantage of association-linked opportunities.

“I’ve been involved with Western Growers, and they have amazing leadership training. And just being really involved in Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. There was lots of great leadership training opportunities.”

Tapping into her Skill Set

Vander Dussen has great communication skills and uses them to promote the farm and agriculture as a whole.

Most consumers do not understand how crops and livestock are produced, she says. And since so few have been on a farm to see how that happens, that lack of understanding makes sense.

“I’m not necessarily trying to change perceptions and opinions so much as expressing who we that choose to be in agriculture are,” Vander Dussen says.

Part of that is showing the wide variety of jobs through various Strohauer employees, from a field irrigator to tractor operators.

“There’s a lot of people out there who, I believe, are meant for agriculture, and they just don’t know it yet,” she says.

Vander Dussen hopes by telling her and the farm’s story through social media, over time it attracts new blood to the industry.

“Because to me, that’s also winning the fight for agriculture. If we want food to stay in our country, we need more people to want to be involved,” she says.

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Another way Vander Dussen’s personal interests are helping the farm is her foodie passion. She loves cooking and meeting chefs.

Strohauer Farms’ main customer base is retail. It’s branching into food service, working with talented chefs who love locally grown, quality produce.

Chefs and their restaurants shape the way consumers understand produce and how to prepare them, she says.

She has done joint social media projects with local chefs, benefiting parties — and those watching.

Ten years into joining the family farm, Vander Dussen is finding her stride.

“It’s just our job in this industry to continue problem solving, and being as resilient as possible, and being more strategic each day. Being better today than we were yesterday,” she says.