Latimer, Iowa (north central) | Average annual price for organic is $8.00. Every month after Jan of a year is 10 cents higher, every month earlier is 10 cents lower. Just simple carry. Conventional has the same carry based on $6.50 Jan. If a farmers holds through spring they get $7.00, sell at harvest they get $6.00. No need to over complicate. A grower has to be an investor to get these prices and will likely have to be an investor to deliver at all. A class F share of the C-corp is $500 and gets delivery rights of 100 bushels with price locked in for 3 years, indexed to grocery price and operating margins after that. The grower investors will likely fill the entire supply. I am the majority owner, as I am personally guaranteeing the 40M of debt financing, and we have a group of 80 +/- farmers investing as well similar to an ethanol plant or sugar beet plants.
At initial start up we will need about 3M bushels of conventional oats and 800,000 bushels of organic oats starting with the 2026 crop year. Demand projections of doubling that in several years. As we have been selling the oat groats, flakes, and flour the demand for sustainably produced, traceable food products from a domestic source resonates with consumers and brands. We sold 26 million lbs of oat flour yesterday.
Working on several angles on low-carbon corn, soybeans, tomatoes, and greens as well. We have a company looking to build in Albert Lea that would purchase corn from our grower network for their needs. As farmers we need to produce what consumers are asking for. We can allow the market to pull farmers into practices with compensation rather then trying to push a sustainability model. Moving beyond just being commodity producers will be the long term key for sustainability, economically and environmentally.
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High yield/high managed oats
