Golden Waves Grain’s $200M vertical integration strategy

Steven Kilger: Hello! My name is Steven Kilger, I’m the managing editor for Feed & Grain magazine and the host of the Feed & Grain Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling and allied industries.

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Today my guest is Tony Adams, former NFL player turned agricultural entrepreneur and co-founder of Golden Waves Grain. Tony has quite the story. After playing for the Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings and other professional teams, he’s now building a $221 million integrated mill and bakery facility in Goodland, Kan. The project combines milling and baking under one roof, saving on costs and putting farmers first, with an investment model that gives producers a guaranteed dollar-per-bushel premium and a stake in the company.

Full warning, this is my longest podcast yet. Tony and I talk about how this five-and-a-half-year journey started with a simple conversation, much like Tony and I have, why Goodland, Kan., produces some of the best hard red winter wheat in the world and how Golden Waves is creating extended shelf-life breads that benefit everyone in the supply chain. Farmers get fair prices, retailers get consistent quality and consumers get fresher, better-tasting bread.

I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you’re listening online, sign up for the Feed & Grain newsletter Industry Watch to see when new podcasts drop and stay up to date with news from around the industry.

Now, on to the show.

Hi, Tony. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Tony Adams: I appreciate you having me on.

Kilger: Yeah, it’s a pleasure. I really like what you’re doing with your Golden Waves Grain project. It seems like a really cool initiative, really good for the producers in Kansas and the surrounding area. I mean, that all sounds great. But before we get into all that, would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself, who you are, how you got to this place in your career?

Adams: I came here in 1975 to play for the Kansas City Chiefs. So I played here for five years. And after that, I actually went up and played at Minnesota for the Vikings. I was originally drafted by the Chargers and played there my rookie year. And then they started the World Football League in 1974. And two or three of the coaches from the Chargers became coaches on that team. And they called me up and said, hey, do you have any interest in coming and playing for us? And I said, you know, one of the things I remember my high school coach telling me, the more you can play, the better you become visible to the other coaches and other teams. And so I said, yeah, I’ll do that.

And fortunately for me, it ended up being maybe the best decision I made because I ended up being the most valuable player of the league. And I had written a bunch of things in my contract that if I were the MVP of the league, if I led the league in passing, that I had significant bonuses tied to it, and I collected them. So for me, one of the major things was that I became a free agent, and then I signed with the Chiefs and came here in '75 and played here, and then went on up to the Minnesota Vikings and also played in Toronto for three years, in Toronto Argonauts in the CFL.

So that’s kind of my background from a sports perspective, but after leaving Toronto, I kind of started some other businesses. One was that we made miniature figurines of active players in the NFL, and I was fortunate because I got a license from the NFL, and they have a friendly relationship with former players that they will allow them to apply and get accepted. And we did that for, oh, three or four years. And then one of the toy companies came in and said, we like your idea, we’re going to buy it. So that happened. And then I started an internet company that was kind of dedicated to the outdoor industry. I’m an avid outdoorsman, and it made sense to do something that I knew a lot about. And so I did that.

And then there was our Chiefs owner, Lamar Hunt. He owned three teams in Major League Soccer, the MLS. And they fired their general manager and called me and said, hey, would you be interested in coming in and be a general manager until we can replace the one we just let go. And I said, sure. And a lot of the reason was I was very active with youth soccer here because my youngest daughter was all Metro goalie and she was playing at University of Arkansas. So they knew I had some connections in the soccer programs throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area. So I did that until they found somebody that they could replace me with. And they finally did after about a year. And I said, you know, this is not my sport. And now I know a lot about it, a lot more than I did, but I appreciate the opportunity to do that.

And then after that, I really got interested in some other projects and followed through with those. And then I got selected to go through a program in Kansas called Leadership Kansas. And every year there’s several hundred applications that come in. And they take 36 people from around the whole state for a year. And we go through a program that we travel throughout the state. You learn about what drives the economy in that region. Down in Wichita, it’s aircraft and aviation. Out west, like in Goodland, it’s farming and agriculture. Here in Kansas City, it’s industry and things like that.

So I went through that program, and I made some acquaintances out in Goodland. And over the years, we’ve been good friends. I played in their golf tournaments. And then I used to take a bunch of the Kansas City Chiefs former players to go out there and play in a charity event to raise money for the regional hospital. And we raised quite a bit of money over the five years that we all went out and participated in that. So I became very familiar with Goodland and the region around there and the people that live in that area and became really good friends with several folks out there.

And we were out there for an event and Alan Townsend and Dave Owen, who was a lieutenant governor here in Kansas years and years ago, and Brian Lennon. We were all sitting around at dinner at Alan’s house. And Alan had a company called 21st Century Bean, which he bought several years ago, like 20-some years ago. And when they first purchased it, I think their income was about a million dollars a year. And now it’s up in that $58 million, $59 million a year of revenue. They’re the largest supplier of pinto beans to the U.S. government.

So as we were talking about all this, I said, well, when I was here for Leadership Kansas, all you talked about was how great of wheat you grew out here in this region of the state. Now that you’ve perfected this dryland wheat farming, and it’s made a big difference in the quality of wheat that’s grown out here. And as a caveat to that, one of our individuals that we hired has a great history in baking and milling and as a consultant to help us kind of navigate through this without making any major mistakes. He was selected by a group in Europe to find the best hard red winter wheat produced in the United States to import for bread. And after taking hundreds of samples from all over the Midwest area that grows hard red winter wheat, the No. 1 wheat in the world grown is right 20 miles south, 15 miles south of Goodland in that whole region.

So as we were talking about that through Leadership Kansas classes, and we were out there for another event, I said, Alan, I said, this is great about your 21st Century Bean, but you guys grow the best wheat in the world for bread. I said, why haven’t you done anything like produce a mill or a bakery or something to take advantage of that commodity? And when I said that, it was like turning on the light bulb in the room because everybody started thinking, that’s not a bad idea. And then we started talking about it. And I said, well, I’ve got some relationships with the head of the Retail Grocers Association here in Kansas and Missouri. And I said, I know some of the executives over at the Associated Wholesale Grocers, which is the largest co-op distribution center in the United States. And they just happened to be here, and I knew some of the guys there.

And so we put one and two together and said, let’s think about this. And let me see what kind of reaction I get from both AWG and RGA and what their bread supply situation is like. I went back to Kansas City, sat down with John McCormick, who’s on our board now, and he’s still the current president and CEO of the Retail Grocers Association. And we start talking about this concept and the idea. And we were at lunch and he said, I will tell you flat out that our supplier of bread couldn’t be worse than anybody has in this country for a company our size. And I said, really? He said, yeah, we just, we get inconsistent delivery. We don’t get bread that has a very long shelf life. We just don’t get the type of supply that we need for our grocery stores.

And AWG, I think at this point has like 4,000 stores that they support in 32 states. As we’ve gone through this, and I got kind of a sign-off from RGA and AWG that this was something that may be of great need to them as a consistent supplier that was regionally located, that would make a big difference in what they do. From that point, we just started investigating, reading about it, getting a couple consultants on board that had a great history in that particular field of both milling and bakery. And from that point, we just kept kind of moving forward with the project, investing in it.

We put together the company, which included our original founders of myself, Dave Owen, Alan Townsend and Brian Lennon. And then we just kind of kept moving forward, listening to people tell us what they thought. And then we got more and more leads about people who had great interest in what we were doing. One of our founders was on the, is still on the Kansas Wheat Commission. And they heard about it. And we thought we need to write something up about this project. And so we applied for a grant from the Wheat Commission, and we got accepted, and we wrote up this feasibility study that when we finished it and it took a while, it took a good four months, five months for us to complete that. And we submitted it to them and presented it to the entire board, the Wheat Commission.

And they just said, without question, this may be the best presentation we’ve ever had come in front of us. So we all sit around and look at each other and said, well, we picked good consultants to help us get this done. After that, we had some of the board members come up and said, would you be interested in building one of these in our area? I said, well, we’re going to start in Goodland and get that project completed, and then we’ll consider obviously moving it to other locations that would benefit a bunch of distribution opportunities in stores around the Midwest. Because our idea was to be kind of a boutique bread supplier to five or six states at the max, and that was what we were targeting.

Now we’ve got three or four locations that have asked us to come and build one in their state to help support what they’re doing. I said, well, guys, we’re really interested in that, but we’ve got to finish No. 1 first. We’ve got to get up and prove it, and we’ve got to make sure that we can do what we said we can do. And the concept was really to combine the bakery system into a milling process. So everything’s under one roof. And as we discussed that, we realized how much we were eliminating in the way of cost to the consumer.

My first thought in this whole project was when we start talking about all that was, guys, if we can’t support the producers, the farmers, this will not work. I said, they’ve been getting the raw end of the deal for years and years and years. We’ve got to find a way to make this work for them. And they all agreed because they all farmed except for Dave and me. And so as we approached it, I said, how can we do this and really benefit the producers? And so we started going through the process of how many producers do we want to invest in this? And how do we incentivize them?

And kind of what we did was sat around and discuss that. We said, OK, with the projections and the ability to generate a lot of revenue, is that we need to incentivize the producers to invest in it and then to be part of the supply chain for us. As we did that, we said, can we afford to give them a dollar bump over Goodland market price for their wheat? And as our accountants and everybody said, yeah, you’ll have lots of revenue based on the letter of intent we got from the AWG folks. And so we’re trying to make sure that we weren’t overstepping our boundaries and being able to live up to the expectations of the producers.

And right now, it’s been one of the major aspects of getting everybody involved in this from an investment in and from supplying us the wheat every year as a result of their owning stock in the company. You know, it kind of has led that way over the last five years. We’ve been planning this and working at it and getting all the right people engaged and involved and coming up with the stock opportunities for the producers. And then we also have the other, we call strategic partners, and that’s people who like to invest in ag-related projects. And we’ve been addressing them, and we’re getting lots of investment dollars coming from those folks, and that’s … it’s just been one of those things. It’s just, it’s happening and it keeps evolving and we keep moving forward. And it’s just, it’s consuming to some degree, but it’s been very rewarding to see what we’ve done.

Kilger: Yeah, that’s a really fascinating story. You’re certainly the first football star we’ve had on the podcast.

Adams: One of the things that I tell everybody, I said when we first got into this, now I knew a little bit about wheat because I lived here since '75. And so I got an idea of what wheat was and how it worked and how it was made into bread. But when Dave and I got into it, Dave was a politician and a banker. And we said, OK, we entered this project as freshmen in college. And now we’re on the end of getting our doctorate’s degree in wheat and baking and milling. We’ve learned a lot in five years.

Kilger: It’s been five years since you came up with that initial idea, that spark?

Adams: Five and a half.

Kilger: Wow. I mean, you’ve made tremendous progress then because you’re getting ready to break ground on this, what, $200 million facility?

Adams: Actually, it’s going to be about $221 million now.

Kilger: Oh, wow. It’s all integrated, correct? So everything will be on site. So you’ll save tons of money from shipping and moving grain from spot to spot and all that kind of stuff.

Adams: The way it really kind of works, which is the old system, the old legacy system, is that the farmers would grow the wheat, then they would take it into a co-op somewhere and store it. And while it’s sitting there, they’re paying three or four cents a bushel while it’s just sitting in the co-op. So we’ve eliminated that part of it. And then the co-op goes to some commodity buyer, and he sells the wheat, and he makes a commission on that. And then it’s shipped to a flour mill, 400 miles, 500 miles, 300 miles, whatever it is. And there’s a cost associated with that. So then once it’s milled, and again, it’s milled with a whole bunch of different types of wheat that comes in.

Kilger: A big miller, they’re just going for consistency, right? They need their flour to be the exact same across every state in the country.

Adams: That’s right. One guy said, if you’re going to sell me bad bread, make sure it’s consistently bad. So that’s kind of the way we’ve moved on that is we’ve got the best hard red winter wheat grown in the world. The bread that we’ve been making as samples has come across as in taste and texture and shelf-life capabilities and all that is the best bread people have ever eaten.

We got a formula gal that we got kind of linked into by one of our consultants. And she had worked for a number of bigger companies. And she said, I wanted to do something with my formulas. And this turned out to be a substantial relationship because the bread that she has and the formulas that she’s put together is just incredible. I mean, we have extended shelf life. And here’s the best part of this whole deal is we have the capability of tracing the farmers to the flour for the bread that you’re eating. So traceability is a big part of this.

Our extended shelf-life capability is a huge advantage for this project and for the people who are going to be distributing it because they go to the retailers from the distribution, then they know they can order bread a little bit longer than they did before because it didn’t have very much shelf life. Usually once the bread got there, it had like 10 days before it was either out of date or it started molding. And all the aspects of our project is we can control the wheat that comes in. We know what the variances are in the moisture count, protein count, everything else. And then on top of that, then we’re saving all that cost of transportation, storage, all the fees associated with moving it from the bakery and shipping it to the bakery to the consumer.

And what we’ve been able to do is initiate putting this bread on the trucks that are already going to the stores and eliminating these union drivers that come by and they’ll pick up the bread at the bakery and they’ll go to Walmart and bypass 20 or five or 30 stores that just don’t get bread on a consistent basis. Our theme was let’s target the unserved markets around the Midwest that they’re getting bypassed because everybody can take their trucks to Walmart and empty them with the bread that they’re delivering and they’re done for the day. And so some of these stores just aren’t getting delivered bread.

Kilger: Well, plus, then it sits in that Walmart warehouse for who knows how long before it actually even gets to the shelves.

Adams: Yeah, that’s right. And so then you have that issue of how long does this bread last when it’s in those type of situations? And it’s not long. If you have bread that lasts 18 days once it’s delivered, you have exceeded some of the length of time that bread normally stays on the shelf, if at all that long. And our bread honestly has extended shelf life that goes out beyond 60 days. Our idea is it’s your eating experience with our bread, how well it tastes, how good it tastes. It maintains its freshness.

One of the little tricks we do when we were in front of an audience and talking about the project, we’ll take a loaf of bread and push it together like an accordion, and the bread bounces right back. If you go pick up another brand of bread and squish it in, that’s where it’s going to stay. It’s not going to bounce back. So that’s all within the formulas.

Kilger: Well, less damage, too. Less lost product to damage then as well.

Adams: Everybody that’s tried this, kept it, looked at it, stored it, said you’re going to have less than 1% of your damaged goods or molded goods coming back. And really, I think the normal rise now is around 8% to 9%, maybe even a little higher of that in some cases of damage because now all goes against the deliverer. And so because of that, that’s why these guys take these truck loads to the Walmarts and stuff because they know that they can get rid of it.

Kilger: Yeah, big buyer. I’m really impressed with how much you’re investing in your local producers. They’re making the best wheat, and that’s great, but it also seems like a big part of the drive behind this is to provide some economic stability for your local wheat producers who, let’s face it, I mean like everyone in agriculture, but especially wheat, they’ve been hit pretty hard over the last 10 years or so and are harder and harder to make that profit. Can you tell me more about your producer investment model? From what I understood, it seems like they guarantee that they’re going to deliver to you a certain amount of wheat every year and then become part owner, something like that.

Adams: They’re investors and they have an obligation to deliver 10,000 bushels every year that they own their stock and their investment’s $50,000 per unit. And we incentivize them by adding a dollar bump for the first five years that they own their stock and that pays them back their investment. So if they bought one unit for $50,000 and they gave us 10,000 bushels for five years, then they get their money back. They maintain their ownership, and then for moving forward for the rest of the time that they own their stock, we’re giving them a 50-cent bump. So whatever the market price is, they’re going to get 50 cents over that as long as they own their stock.

And the way our projections are and the number of units of bread and buns that we can sell is not interfering with our cash flow whatsoever. And it’s the big incentive for them.

Kilger: Yeah, and that’s brilliant because it is an incentive. It gives you both a guaranteed inputs, right? Every year you know how much is coming in. It gives producers the chance to grow with your business versus selling to some kind of anonymous corporation where they will get all the profit at the end of the day and the farmer will get what they get.

Adams: Once we have our cash flow, which should happen immediately because we have a letter of intent to buy our bread as soon as it comes off the first loaf, that they also participate in the dividends. Just like any other stockholder, their units are less expensive, but as long as they have their unit, they’re going to participate in the dividend program as well, besides the bump in the wheat price.

Kilger: Yeah, so they’re getting a lot of advantages to sell to you guys. And it seems like you’re then recuperating whatever that extra you have to pay them. You’re getting it through efficiencies on the actual site, having a bakery there, not having transportation costs. Sounds like your distribution system is going to save you guys quite a bit of money as well. And giving that money back into the actual farmer’s hands and the community’s hands seems like a perfect way to bridge this disconnect that a lot of people have between them and agriculture and their community.

Adams: Two of our founders are farmers. And then we added another founder, John Mossbarger, and he’s a producer, he’s a farmer. And not only did he invest in that, he bought several of our B shares, which are farmer shares, so he has obligated quite a bit of their wheat to the project. And this project, to maximize our mill and our bakery capabilities, we only need 2 million bushels of wheat. And in that region, within a 60-mile radius of Goodland, they produce 65 million bushels of wheat. So for us to get access to 2 million bushels is not going to be a problem because we have most of our B shares, which is our producer’s shares, sold. And so we’re at that point now where we’re just targeting our strategic investors and we’ve got some of those already committed and already invested.

So we’re just moving the pile along just a little by little. And we’re getting close to that raise. And we have a group that’s involved with us that’s doing our capital raise. They become a lot more aggressive now that we got the not-to-exceed number from our construction company. So all of it’s kind of coming together and it’s come together in this last two months pretty quick.

Kilger: Wow, that’s exciting, though. It must be after this five and a half years. And it makes sense why so many other people are like, hey, come build here. We would love this.

Adams: Oh, yeah, no, it is. Yeah, we kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have probably, I would say, 50 to 60 of the major wheat producers in that region have invested in this project.

Kilger: And it’s a win-win for them, too, because now they get to fill empty trucks. You guys get to save considerably in another group of people that could probably really use those extra shipments. And this helps make them whole on these drives.

Adams: One of the hardest, they’re not much of wheat growers, but the Foot family, or big cattle operations. I met with them several times, and the rest of us had all met with them and the rest of the founders. One of the hang-ups was he kept trying to look at it as if we were shipping cattle and not bread. And finally dawned on him, and Scott Foot’s a sharp guy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just, he’s been in that business so long. He goes, I know about transportation because we’re transporting in and out cattle every day. I said, yeah, but it’s different. Let me explain why.

The state of Colorado imports everything. They export nothing. So they’ve got trucks that are delivering products right off of I-70. And these truckers are back-hauling empty trucks. So we’ve been able to negotiate incredible fees for taking the goods back east somewhere, whether it be Oklahoma City, Springfield, Norfolk, Neb., or Kansas City. We know it’s going to cost us about 7 cents for a loaf of bread for transportation.

Kilger: This just seems like a really brilliant project.

Adams: Plus for us, and maybe from an ecology part of this, it costs less for gas to haul a lighter load. Even though the trucks are full, taking it back to the distribution centers, they’re not going to use near as much fuel because they’re not hauling that heavy of a load.

Kilger: You’re going to have to invite us out there when you guys are finished with the build.

Adams: You’ll get an invite to come out for our groundbreaking. It would be good. So whenever that date gets set. And like I said, we want to make sure our government friends who have helped us along the way here. I mean, we have like an $84 million or $74 million incentive package from the state of Kansas.

Kilger: Oh, yeah, that’d be nice. Well, it seems like a lot of people are getting on board. The Kansas Department of Commerce, like your local government, the Foot family, obviously, you’re getting a lot of interest from all over the place.

Adams: We are. And I think people are starting to realize that we can deliver, especially to our AWG partners and the retail grocers who are partners with AWG, and that they’re going to get consistent bread with extended shelf life and great flavor, great product that they can sell. Plus they can order more than they have to, because it can sit there in their storeroom at the stores.

A lot of these stores here, the major stores in Kansas City, if you go into those stores on Wednesday, their bread shelves are half empty. Come Saturday or Sunday, they’re back to half empty again. And they don’t get their supplies or their bread just hasn’t been sitting there too long and they have to pull it off the shelf. So what they’re going to be able to do is, let’s say, for a holiday weekend, they may order twice as many hamburger buns and hot dog buns, because if they don’t sell them all, they still have another 30, 40 days of shelf life, they can put them in the aisles to sell.

That’s why I said it’s taken us like five and a half years to get to this point, but we tried to address every issue that could come up, why somebody could say, no, I don’t think this is a good idea.

Kilger: You guys have managed to do it in a way that everyone seems to win.

Adams: You nailed it right on the head. And this came from our farmer partners. They said, if we can have everybody win on this, simple of the way we’re putting this together, then how can anybody not see the benefits and the value of what we’re doing? And that’s what we’ve been able to do.

Kilger: Yeah, not the least of which is Goodland, which is you’re building this plant, you’re planning on what, 141 full-time jobs? That’s huge for a rural Kansas town.

Adams: It really is. And we’ve got our general managers set up that they’re only working three days a week at 12-hour shifts. So they got four days if they needed to get another job or if they just don’t want to move permanently to Goodland, they’re in areas maybe not very far from Goodland. But they can go back and they’ve got that time off to do whatever. But we’ve got a consistency of labor that comes in there. And these are good jobs. I think our average salary is like $51,000.

For us, it’s a good way to keep the consistency of our labor intact. When they see the facility that we’re going to build, it will be probably the No. 1 tourist attraction in that whole region of Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, because this is a significant facility. It’s going to have a center for people to come and they can use it in the community for events. We’ve got the ability that’s set up that people come in and they can walk down these glass-walled ramps and watch how the flour’s made and how the bread’s made, and they can all see that.

So I think a lot of the area schools will be having tours through there and senior groups will want to come and see it. It’s going to be a project that’s going to be pretty significant to the whole region.

Kilger: Because all the time you hear from ag businesses across the spectrum, you hear, how do we connect with the community? Because you need the community there. You need them to support what you want to do. You need them for the workforce. You need them for all these different things. And hiding away what agriculture does isn’t good for anybody. It’s not good for consumers. It’s not good for agriculture itself and the business we do. You have nothing to hide. Come on in. Come in local community. See how it works. See what we’re doing here. We want you involved.

Adams: This is as transparent as you can get. And that was the intent. We always had the concept of we’re going to build a second one and a third one. And now we’ve got states that have read about it, heard about it, are asking us when can they start one of these projects in their state. And I said, well, like I said, it’s important that we get the first one done. So once we’re along in that one, we’re going to start on the second and third one probably.

Kilger: Well, especially when you think, I mean, I’m one of those people jumping ahead of you, but what other products and what other commodities could a model like this be adapted for?

Adams: There’s probably some, but we’ve been so focused on bread and buns that we haven’t even thought that far along down the line. But, you know, so are we. I mean, we’ve invested an awful lot of time over the last five and a half years, and we’re seeing a result of that time that we spent researching and questioning and making sure we didn’t make any major mistakes along the way, and it’s paid off.

It’s moving along and we are appreciative of our investors and people are going to help us with our construction loan and everything else that’s kind of essential to this project. We have come a long way.

Kilger: Hopefully you inspire others. We can build this. We can have it built this way. We can have it structured this way. I don’t know. I’m very excited about the project for you. How long do you expect the build process to last?

Adams: It should take us about 18 months. Main contractor is out of Wichita, the Hutton Construction. And then the company that’s supplying the milling equipment is from Wichita. The people supplying the baking equipment are from Kansas City and parts of Kansas.

Kilger: You’re able to keep it all within the community then.

Adams: Yeah, that’s what we tried to do. If it was all possible, and we weren’t taken away from quality of equipment, we wanted to do it with Kansas-related companies, and we’re the No. 1 wheat-growing state. We have a great story. That’s the biggest part of this is it’s a story about, you know, we’ve taken this area of Kansas that gets unnoticed and taken their great wheat and producing high quality of bread for far less money.

Kilger: An optimistic story, too, which is nice. This is things going in the right direction for rural America, and we could use that right now.

Adams: Yeah, I agree with you. I think it’s exactly the way we thought about this. Because I’ve had several people say, well, why would you build it in Goodland? And I say, well, let’s see. That’s where the best hard red winter wheat is raised in the world. So therefore, when we get through making the flour and going through the milling process, we’re going to have the best bread. It just makes sense. It’s one of those things that everything comes together and it’s going to be an opportunity to take the commodity they’ve perfected out there and turn it into the best bread you can eat.

Kilger: Yeah, not to mention saves you a lot of money with transportation and moving, it’s fresher product. All of those are huge benefits. And plus, I think it’s important that the communities that produce the commodities that we consume and we need to live get some of the benefit of that production.

Adams: Absolutely. We sit back here and like in Kansas City, and I’m sure everybody knows how bread is produced, but they don’t know how much intensity goes into the farmer. Do we get rain? Do we not get rain? What can I afford to plant this year? I mean, it just gets into some significant details and why these farmers struggle. We’re going to try and eliminate that.

Kilger: Yeah, and ultimately are kind of at the whims of a global market.

Adams: Right.

Kilger: Well, this sounds amazing. I’m really grateful for you coming on and talking to me today. It’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to following this project for the rest of the way.

Adams: I appreciate you having me on. The more people that hear about this and understand what we’re doing allows us to probably grow this a little bit more to other regions. But the one key thing is our project, we have our own rail system. So we’re not going to have to go out and source somebody else’s wheat. We’ll still be able to utilize a high-quality wheat in that region. Let’s say we build one in Utah. We’ll be able to transport that wheat to Utah and use the same types of formulas, the same type of marketing strategy, the extended shelf life, the quality of the project or the product. And it’s fortunate for us that we’ll be able to use that region of the state to supply other projects.

Kilger: A lot easier to move the wheat than eventually like have the big distribution network be the bread.

Adams: Exactly. Because it’ll go right from us, from our farmers, right to a new project. They’ll mill it and bake it and ship it. Part of this is people are going to get fresh bread because it’s going to go right from our bakery into the trucks and our distribution. They can drive it one day, unload it, and then day or two or three they’ll have it in the stores. And that’s just not what happens currently.

Kilger: It’s rare to see a product going up in quality. You know, everything seems like it’s getting worse all the time. So to be like, oh, this is actually fresher, better. You’re supporting farmers. It’s really cool. If people want to know more, where can they find out some more information on the project?

Adams: They can go to our website, which is goldenwavesgrain.com. And they can do that. There’s contact information in there, too. They need to contact any of us, the founders and the board. But there’s a lot of information in our website about this project, the history and how it has evolved and all benefits that we’re going to offer to the consumer. As you talked about, everybody benefits. The person we haven’t mentioned is the consumer. We’re going to be able to sell this better bread for less price, have great margins for the retailer, but they can pass that on to the consumer for less money because they still have great margins.

Kilger: Plus they get to benefit from the fact that our country grows the best wheat in the world.

Adams: Yes, that’s one of those things that I think when everybody thinks about automobiles, we have great automobiles, but where does the Porsche come from? Where does the Lamborghinis come from? Where do all these high-dollar, high-expensive cars? They come from foreign countries. And you look here in our country and we sell how many Japanese-made vehicles in this country? And German-made cars? But right now, nobody has better wheat than what we do here right in Kansas.

Kilger: Yep, throughout the entire agriculture chain. America does grow things well.

Adams: And the best part of it is out there in Goodland, they have perfected this dryland wheat-growing process. I mean, they need water, but they don’t need as much water as everybody else needs to grow their product.

Kilger: Well, that’s the great thing about wheat. It’s an ever-improving crop.

Adams: Yeah, that’s one of the unique things about this is we have our own lab, and Angie is being able to capitalize on new formulas and things with the type of wheat that we have.

Kilger: Well, then you also get quality control.

Adams: No question about that. That’s a priority in this project is our quality control. Matter of fact, we know one of the distributors that we’ve been discussing this whole project with will distribute our bread. He said a lot of their retailers are having to buy frozen buns. And I don’t know if you’ve ever frozen bread and thawed it out. It’s not good. Yeah, it’s not good on the Fourth of July.

Kilger: Thank you so much. You have an inspiring story and what you guys are doing is just so, so cool.

Adams: Well, there’s been a lot of hands on this fire. And so it was just an idea that I suggested and said, you know, I knew the guys that could confirm whether or not was a good idea or not. And they all confirmed it was. And from that point, with the backgrounds of Alan and  from that point, with the backgrounds of Allen and 21st Century Bean and Brian Lennon and John Mossbarger, and they all had great input on how we should treat, how we should handle the producers and what would be a major incentive for them and all those things.

So it worked out, and it's worked out really well.

Kilger: I would say so. Well, we will have you on again once the project's a little closer to being finished. I hope we will get to visit it out there at some point.

Adams: Well, I appreciate it, and again, I appreciate you having me on.

 : Very happy to. Everybody out there listening, thank you so much for doing so, and stay safe till next time.