Customer-Focused Farming

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

The demands of a small-scale, direct-to-consumer farm are vastly different than those of a large, commercial operation. One thing Steve Strasheim learned when building up Twisted River Farms is that he’d spend a lot more time in front of customers than inside the cab of a tractor, which has turned out to work in his favor. Steve now makes a full time income farming less than five acres of market vegetables.

Strasheim… “As of any business, you always have to think what are your advantages or what is your resources? And mine is, I just, I like talking to people. I tell you what, that keeps me going for the next week here. And when I hear people say, oh my gosh, your tomatoes last week, I told my friend about them. They were so good, and we had to come back and get some more. I tell you what, that just, I could float on the cloud for the whole week after hearing that. I mean that's kind of in a way probably why we ended up with their cultural system that we have is a lot of farmers just wanna sit in the tractor and they don't wanna talk to people. And I think there's a lot to be said around that conversation about what does the future of agriculture look like? And, you know, there's a lot of talk about some farmers converting to direct sale. I think there's a lot of farmers that are gonna maybe have to face that reality, you know, in the coming years. I don't know. I don't know what the future looks like, but a lot of people are talking about it and I think that's something that they maybe don't really think through is like, I might have to go talk to people now.”

Strasheim believes connecting with customers will be one of the biggest gaps to fill.