In this episode of the Red Dirt Agronomy Podcast, Brady Sidwell, President and founder of Sidwell Strategies and Enterprise Grain in the Enid, Oklahoma area. The company provides risk management and marketing solutions for food and agriculture enterprises. It also handles futures and options trading in the commodities markets. In this episode, Sidwell is discussing the increased interest in developing a clear path for consumers from farm to fork, mainly in Northern Oklahoma.
Sidwell is a graduate of Oklahoma State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics with a focus on international marketing. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Hong Kong, where he was a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar to China. Early in his career, Sidwell worked on U.S. Department of Agriculture projects in South Korea and Thailand. In China, he worked in the banking and food industries. Before founding Sidwell Strategies, he spearheaded global business development, investment, and strategy as a vice president with OSI Group. The previous paragraph is an excerpt from kansascityfed.org.
“Fresh milled flour is just blowing up,” Sidwell explained. “People are more concerned about additives in their foods. We are trying to be an avenue for consumers to be able to get ingredients directly from farms.”
Producers need accessible locations to deliver their diverse products because it would be unreasonable to expect them to participate in the growing niche markets without nearby delivery points. However, one of the biggest challenges is connecting production agriculture with the food industry. Bridging the gap between agriculture and the food industry involves addressing differences in how each operates. Farmers typically deal in bulk, while the food industry needs a consistent, year-round supply that meets specific safety and quality standards.
For this purpose, Sidwell began Enterprise Grain, which he refers to as a “step into an unchartered area.” He explained, “We really need our delivery points, but even after that is to be able to clean a product and bag it – fumigate – to be able to fill out a HACCP plan. The challenge is where production agriculture goes to food. The infrastructure between that and the people that are communicating with each other, that is the most difficult.”
Putting the infrastructure for delivery points is just the beginning. After that, Sidwell is charged with working with companies that don’t understand agriculture and its unpredictability.
“It’s a risk to offer a farmer a contract, then if there isn’t a futures contract to hedge ourselves with, we have to hedge ourselves with the contract at the next point in the supply chain,” Sidwell explained. They want to know how many pounds of cleaned product they can have. It is just bridging that gap from ag to food, and somebody has got to do it. A lot of this part of the sector has been extremely consolidated over the years, and that is not always best for the farmer, so we are trying to create these alternate avenues.”
Through his efforts, he has also found that young people coming back to the farm want to do things differently. Some want a brand or are looking at regenerative ag and Sidwell is an avenue for all of those concepts.
“We are now doing toll millings so people can bring us their grain, and we will mill it into flour if they want to have their own flour product,” he said. “We help store frozen beef. That is another bottleneck that they have to bring it to market.”
Infrastructure, especially cold storage, is critical for family farms building direct-to-consumer beef programs, creating a significant bottleneck that is challenging to overcome. He encouraged entrepreneurs in local communities to look for ways to bring commerce back to family farms.
He noted that since the COVID pandemic caused more people to question the established food supply chain, there is more interest in learning about the origins of food, direct-to-consumer markets, and cleaner ingredients. This growing awareness creates a significant opportunity for local and regional agriculture.
“People are starting to get more conscious that food is health and what we eat matters,” Sidwell observed. “It’s not just about treating with pharmaceuticals, but about eating healthier as a lifestyle. There are a lot of venture companies getting interested in these types of things.”
Sidwell’s franchisable approach of creating small, localized ecosystems with essential infrastructure can be scaled and replicated nationwide. This model supports local agriculture by adding value to specialty crops.
“I think it’s important because when you look at the direction the average age of farmers is moving, and the average age of taxpayers – it’s going lower. Do you know what that means?” Sidwell asked. “Unless we get the youth of the country more engaged in the supply chain, and food, and local, and having an appreciation for it, it is going to be hard to continue getting congressmen elected that want to fund agriculture.”
Sidwell spoke more about the growing interest and his journey to food supply chain solutions. Click here to listen to the entire episode on the Red Dirt Agronomy Podcast website.
