Frey speaks to IDFA Dairy Forum

PALM DESERT, Calif. — Sarah Frey, founder and CEO of Frey Farms who was in the mix to be named President Trump’s agriculture secretary, told the International Dairy Foods Association’s Dairy Forum here this week the story of how she founded her company at age 17.

Frey is best known as America’s largest producer of fresh watermelons and pumpkins. Frey Farms started out in Illinois and Indiana but is now headquartered in South Florida.

Frey said her original business strategy was to stress that her melons and pumpkins were locally produced, and she has maintained that strategy as she expanded the company.

Frey noted that, while she had engineered the seeds out of watermelons and dairy producers had engineered the fat out of milk, now whole milk and seeded watermelons are popular once again.

“Maybe we went too far,” she said. “Consumers have come back to simple foods, a simple way of life.”

With Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dairy is “positioned good. I am a little bit jealous,” she said.

The Make America Healthy Movement that Kennedy has championed is “just getting started,” she said.

As her business expanded, Frey said she has kept her commercial driver’s license current to remember she was a truck driver. Frey is also a senior adviser of rural policy to the America First Policy Institute, which was founded by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.