Farmer-entrepreneur Jeremy Zobrist discusses the highs and lows of creating an on-farm CPG brand
Acres U.S.A. Can you talk a little bit about your background? You grew up on the farm in central Illinois, but you made the decision to go this atypical route.
Jeremy Zobrist. Sure. I grew up on the farm, and I really enjoyed planting a crop, taking care of it, and harvesting it. From a young age, I always had this crazy thought that I wanted to grow crops that people around here weren’t growing. I remember at 16 or 17 talking to the local Libby’s plant that contracts pumpkins in our area, thinking maybe I could do that kind of farming.
But my path took a little different twist. I went to college and studied accounting. I thought I could do taxes in the winter and farm the rest of the year, but I hated doing taxes. I’m not really an accountant — I’m more of an entrepreneur. But doing accounting was very affirming. I would say that was a second formative piece in my career — really understanding balance sheets and income statements, making buy decisions, learning how to look at the numbers in a dynamic situation — not just what your costs used to be or what they are today, but what will they be in the future.
I spent about five years in public accounting. I did some consulting work and enjoyed that, and then I had a chance to work for an ag tech company. That was the third really formative piece. The founder of that company was a great marketer. He was a great problem solver. I found myself working closely with engineers, helping to troubleshoot some of the technical problems and then finding suppliers and getting a product from point A to the end zone. I realized, “This is what I’m wired to do.” So I decided I was going to move on, although I wasn’t sure what I would do next.
I ended up buying part of a food business called Watershed Foods. Food was one of the verticals that I was intrigued with because it could tie into farming. I bought a piece of it with sweat equity, and we were supplying freeze-dried strawberries to Kellogg. We were hemorrhaging cash, though, and early on I realized that we could never have the marketing muscle that Kellogg had, but I felt like we could do two things that the industry valued and would pay for. One was the ability to solve problems creatively, and the other was to move very fast. So that’s how we built our culture at Watershed.
We didn’t turn it around overnight, but eventually we were able to create a freeze-dried toddler snack that was better tasting and better for kids. That product exploded in growth and helped us turn the business around and then thrive. That’s when I realized, “Hey, I want to do that again!”
A fourth formative thing was that I got married, and my wife has Crohn’s disease. We were challenged to eat better, and then we realized that when we eat better, we feel better, and we can do life better.
I have a real passion for food innovation and how it intersects with farming. We’ve got a whole bunch of specialty crops. Pumpkin is our biggest one. We’re exploring herbs, and we’re exploring edamame and popcorn. I think you have to look for that unique dynamic the market is really looking for. What can you do that’s innovative, and then how do you tie that back to the actual farm?
Acres U.S.A. What does your home farm look like? How many acres are you growing pumpkins on, and what does that production look like?
Zobrist. The home farm my wife and I own is about 200 acres, half tillable. We have some ground with irrigation, which gives us a little more flexibility to do different kinds of crops. We get enough rain, and the soil is heavy enough that you probably don’t need irrigation for corn or soybeans, but for some of the other specialty crops it’s a nice tool to have.
We own another 100 acres, and in total our team farms about 800 acres, all organic. The balance is long-term cash rent. A lot of people in our community think I’m crazy, but there’s a few that are like, “Wow, that’s fun. I want to be part of that. I like growing stuff that ends up on a grocery store shelf” or “I like that my farm is being used for that.”
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