Serving Both Farmer Customers and Consumers

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

In the seed industry, it’s important to please not only the customer, which are farmers, but also the consumer who ultimately purchases the harvest. Modern day seed company Benson Hill is building an integrated model that begins with the consumer in mind. CEO Matt Crisp says it opens the door for better ingredients and more value for everyone involved.

Crisp… “We began a few years ago, innovating a business model to really find a way to reach past the farmgate and serve and link ultimately, consumer interests and our customer's interests with farmer interests. And there are ways to do that by focusing on quality traits and things like nutrition density, moving product in an identity-preserved fashion, and then capturing the real value of those genomics/genetics innovations as seed innovation, which is that might be at the ingredient level. It might be at the fresh food level. And to boot, those markets are exponentially larger than the seed market or the ag inputs market.”

Crisp admits that this approach to building new company is far from easy.

Crisp… “Executing a delivery model is not trivial. In ag and food especially. In this value chain, it's not easy.”

Benson Hill is partnering with both farmers and food companies to deliver their proprietary genetics of soybeans and yellow peas.