By Shifting from Row Crops to Ancient Grains, a Michigan Farm Family Creates a New Healthy Snack

When row crop prices sagged in 2015, the Smith family decided to try producing ancient grains on their seventh-generation farm. They grew teff, an Ethiopian grain, and began using it to make a new snack called Teffola.

By Jack Heffron

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September 24, 2024 02:43 PM

Claire teffola AgWeb Grow Getters.png — Claire Smith, Tenera Grains

When prices on row crops sagged 10 years ago, the Smith family made a major pivot on their seventh-generation Michigan farm. Instead of continuing to focus on growing corn and soybeans, they switched to ancient grains, particularly an Ethiopian grain called teff. Starting slowly, they planted just 33 acres to test it. The crop flourished. Which gave them another idea: what if they created a product using teff that they could package and sell?

Cue daughter Claire, who had left the farm to attend college and then worked in retail. She not only didn’t like farming, she was literally allergic to it. But when her parents asked her to come back and start a CPG brand using teff, she agreed. And the Smiths haven’t looked back.

“That blank page of possibility was super attractive to me,” Claire tells Davis Michaelsen on the latest episode of his Grow Getters podcast, which focuses on how ag producers can diversify their operations by creating a side business. With an inhaler in hand to combat her allergies, Claire returned to the farm, started building a company called Tenera Grains and created Teffola, a granola snack using the family’s teff and buckwheat harvest.

Now available in a variety of flavors, Teffola is regeneratively grown, non-GMO and gluten free, using no artificial flavors or sweeteners. Customers can order it online or find it at health food stores in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. Not that the road to success has been without its share of obstacles.

“I’ve been through some rollercoaster hills and valleys,” she says. “Like any good business owner, you have no idea what you’re doing when you start it. But we’ve learned a couple of tricks of the trade.” Those tricks have led the family to expand beyond just teff. “We’re pivoting into the alternative grains space, specifically gluten-free grains, and we also clean and process grains.”

So a farm started in 1837 finds itself on the leading edge of alternative grains while continuing to create new versions of their original product, including Teffola Bites — for people who want a healthy snack while on the go.

To grow-getting farm folks thinking about starting a business to augment their ag operations, Claire says, “Feel the fear and do it anyway. Things will unfold. You might make a wrong decision but you’ll adjust and take a different path. There are just beautiful things that happen when you take a chance.”