CRITES SEED, INC. About

First as manager of a vegetable canning company in Ohio and then later as a seedsman based in North Dakota, Willis Crites witnessed the extreme yield and quality variability of seed peas produced in the Midwest. Ever the optimist, he came to view this as a potential opportunity—an opportunity to be captured if he could locate an agricultural region in the United States better suited for seed pea production than the Heartland.

In 1930, Crites’s search took him to the Palouse, a scenic landscape of rolling hills and fertile soils stretching across portions of Southeastern Washington and North Central Idaho. Although the Palouse historically had been devoted to grain production, Crites suspected that the soil and climate were ideally suited for seed peas. To test his hypothesis, he needed the support of a few prominent Palouse farmers who would be willing to give peas a try. His idea resonated with a group of “big field” growers from the areas around Moscow, Idaho, and Tekoa, Washington, and in 1933 he and nine of those growers formed a cooperative, Crites-Moscow Growers, Inc., to produce, process, and market pea seed.

The initial board of directors of Crites-Moscow Growers established two prime objectives: (1) to build a state-of-the-art seed processing and storage facility in Moscow, and (2) to develop a superior line of canning peas. They completed construction of the processing plant and warehouse in 1936 and introduced Superlaska, a high-yielding canner pea variety, in 1937. Superlaska’s broad acceptance launched the young company on a steep growth trajectory. The customer list grew rapidly from 15 canners to more than 50, while annual seed production expanded from 2 million to 5 million pounds.

Then, tragically, Willis Crites passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in 1943 at age 57. The company had lost its visionary and charismatic leader, but Merle Stubbs, the Research Director, ably stepped into the General Manager position, and he, along with Production Manager A.E. Koster and a dedicated, forward-looking board of directors, successfully guided the company through the remainder of the decade. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, Crites-Moscow Growers continued to grow in importance as a supplier of pea seed primarily serving the Midwest and East Coast canning industry.