The Farm CPA Podcast: Saratoga Farm Partnership from Iowa

This week Paul Neiffer has a conversation with Tim Richter and Jackson Dohlman, partners in Saratoga Partnership.

By Sara Schafer

•

July 27, 2023 11:05 AM

This week Paul Neiffer has a conversation with Tim Richter and Jackson Dohlman, partners in Saratoga Partnership. The row crop operation is based in Lime Springs, Iowa, and has an operation near Clinton, Mo.

Richter’s father started farming in Iowa in 1959.

“My dad who moved the family 120 miles from northwest Iowa to northeast Iowa. He just kept going East until the land got cheap enough,” Richter says.

In 1981, Richter and his brother, Randy, started farming together. They worked in conjunction with their father but had their own operation.

“My brother and I raised hogs through the 80s,” Richter says. “In the 90s we kept growing, and by the early 2000s, we decided to bring in another partner.”

Enter Dohlman, a Riceville, Iowa, native who had graduated from Iowa State University in 2003 and had been working in ag retail. He officially joined Saratoga Partnership in 2005.

“In 18 months, we doubled our operation acre-wise, so it was a perfect meeting,” Richter says. “We’ve been very happy ever since. My brother unfortunately passed away in December 2014 of cancer. So now my wife and I farm with four unrelated partners.”

Listen to the episode:

Dohlman initially joined the operation as a hired hand. Then he had the opportunity to buy in as a partner.

“So much of life, I’ve learned as luck and timing and sometimes you just, you just got to be in the right place at the right time,” he says.

Saratoga Parntership is lead by management and leadership team comprised of the active owners. Dohlman is the operations manager and Richter is in a strategic and visionary role.

Is That A Pink Flamingo?

As Saratoga Partnership grew, the partners decided to work with a branding consultant. She lead the team through an exercise to define their competitive advantage.

“It was quite a difficult thought process to determine what we feel is truly unique compared to our competition,” Richter recalls. “Then we hit on the idea of fun. That is our overriding philosophy. If you and I are going to have a transactional relationship and it’s just a pain to deal with, we will no longer do it. If it’s not fun, we’re going to go home. By stating that and making that part of our philosophy and letting other people know what we want to do, it helps us in relationships.”

As such, the team incorporated a pink flamingo into their logo.

“Our logo has a pink flamingo and surrounded by green plants. Those symbolize corn, which we really like to grow,” Richter says. “The pink flamingo says that we stand out amongst our competition, and the pink flamingo has a connotation of having fun—not serious fun, you know, cheap fun.”

Richter says when his team gives someone their business cards, it sparks a conversation.

“It invites the ask,” he says. “People look at it and say, ‘What’s with the flamingo?’ Therefore, it gives you an opportunity to make your elevator speech.”