Diversification has long been a big part of life for the Riggers family on their farm in Idaho’s fertile Camas Prairie. Diverse soil types support a diversity of crops, ranging from wheat (soft white, hard red winter and hard red spring), food-grade barley, canola, rapeseed, mustard, chickpeas, green peas and lentils. Roughly 15 percent of their more than 8,000 acres produces grass seed — Kentucky blue, turf-type tall fescue and reclamation varieties.
This diversification enables Clearwater Farms to remain profitable even when commodity prices are down. It also helps improve soil health, says Nate Riggers on the latest episode of Grow Getters, a Farm Journal podcast focused on how producers are diversifying their operations by starting new businesses. “We’re very sensitive to maintaining soil health and we do that primarily through reduction tillage and growing a diverse complement of crops to stimulate the soil biology.”
So it should come as no surprise that the family continued to diversify its operation in 2019 by starting a new business, Cold Stream Malt & Grain Company, which processes craft malt barley and sells finished craft malt to breweries throughout the Pacific Northwest. While barley has been a foundational crop on Clearwater Farms for quite a while, Nate’s son, Chris, who now leads the family operation, says finding a strong market for it has been difficult in the past.
“We’re not close to interstates or big cities and that’s where the malt houses are and the breweries,” Chris says. “It’s been challenging to have a competitive market for growing malt barley.”
To create their own market and drive Cold Stream Malt & Grain toward success, the Riggers partnered with Horlacher Farms in Latah, Washington, and have added value along the supply chain by offering finished malts under their brand. “The company falls in with the theme of everything else we strive for on our farm in adding diversity in a lot of different ways,” Chris says.
While Chris’s return to the farm in 2017 has played a key role in starting the new company, Nate says the malt barley idea has been knocked around on the family farm for a while. “My brother, Steve, and I were about 20 years too early,” he says. “We couldn’t get our foot in the door because we didn’t have the contacts with malt house and craft breweries to complete the chain. When Christopher came back to the operation, he and our partner were able to get the business off the ground.”
Given that the Riggers family has been profitably farming their land since 1895 and, in 2022, were chosen as a finalist for the Top Producer award, all signs point toward continued success.
Watch the full Grow Getters interview:
Visit the Clearwater Farms website: https://clearwaterfarms.us/
Visit the Cold Stream Malt & Grain Company website: https://coldstreammalt.com/
