By Joe Kertzman, managing editor, Badger Common’Tater
A true heritage farm by its very definition, Dagen Heritage Farms of Karlstad, Minnesota, has experienced consecutive ownership within the same family for 150 years or more and far exceeds the 40-acre minimum to qualify it as such.
Albert Dagen immigrated from western Germany to central Minnesota in the 1840s before moving to (future) Karlstad, in 1882. Finding the soil to be especially fertile, the next three generations stayed within 4 miles, raising livestock and growing potatoes and other crops.
When Justin Dagen’s father passed away, in 1977, Justin took over his family’s seed potato operation as a high school senior.
He continued growing foundation certified seed potatoes and building relationships in the industry while taking several regional and national leadership roles, including president of the National Potato Council, in 2011.
Justin’s sons, Brooks and Sander, have since joined the operation. Over 140 years later, they are 6th-generation farmers in the same township.
Justin, what are you most proud of regarding your family’s heritage of growing potatoes in Northwestern Minnesota? I’m most proud of my Dagen ancestors who immigrated from Germany in the 1840s and spent some time in Racine, Wisconsin, before coming to northern Red River Valley of Minnesota in the early 1880s.
Great-grandfather David Dagen was one of the founders of the Minnesota Certified Seed Potato program, in 1917, and my father, Duane Dagen, was an excellent husband and father, and farmer and accountant, but had health issues and passed away when I was 17 years old, in 1977.
