TORRINGTON – Ag leaders from across the state converged at Eastern Wyoming College last week for a two-day Wyoming Agriculture Diversification Summit. The event aimed to identify emerging and developing value-added and specialty agriculture initiatives; establish strategic actions for both private and public-private opportunities; and expand producers’ professional networks in Wyoming and across the country.

Friday morning, the Career and Technical Education Center featured the “Wyoming Breakfast with Champions” held in conjunction with “In the Trenches: Differentiation and Best Practices”.

Differentiation refers to a unique or different product, as compared to others in the market. Friday’s session highlighted Wyoming-brand livestock, food, and other products.

Champions included Shawn Madden of Madden Brothers; Brad Boner, Mountain States Lamb Coop; David Fales, Wyoming Authentic Products; Todd Graus, BioPacker; Karen Hostettler, Mountain Meadow Wool; and Val Murray, Murraymere Farms.

House District No. 1 Representative and Chief of Ranching Operations at BeefChain Tyler Lindholm moderated the morning’s session, kicking off the day with a discussion about the benefits of diversification and blockchain technology – or immutable digital information stored in a public database.

“By enabling unique animal identification and ensuring origin, BeefChain (using blockchain technology) allows the rancher to receive premium pricing for premium beef and provides consumers with greater confidence in the meat they consume,” according to the BeefChain website (beefchain.com).

Friday, Lindholm said there are companies shutting down headquarters in Hong Kong and New York and moving to Wyoming in response to the state’s recent blockchain legislation, adding the technology is providing a means to “diversify the economy … and figure out a way to make Wyoming attractive to folks that have never (considered) the state before.”

Madden was the first “champion” to speak, and briefly touched on his experience at Torrington Livestock Markets.

“(Corporations) want to buy large groups of high-quality cattle … they want uniformity, health, quantity, and they come here and do pay a premium,” he said. “Value-added is clearly a way that we can add value to these high-quality cattle … we have a small percentage of cattle raised in Wyoming that get finished in Wyoming.”

Madden added the state would benefit from a beef processing plant, but it would need to run year-round.

“It is encouraging to me, to keep these ag producers in Wyoming going, that the state and university and all the politicians are interested in getting diversified things that add value to our product.”

Boner is chairman of the board for Mountain States Lamb Cooperative, a third-generation marketing cooperative that focuses on value-added products rather than commodities. Although the cooperative encompasses 12 states and includes 140 member/shareholder ranch families working together to secure a future for the next generation in the American lamb industry, Boner said “this is a Wyoming effort … it’s not too surprising we have more Wyoming members than we have anywhere else.”

After purchasing processing and distributing plants, members now own and operate all phases of the value chain and have access to all phases “from the farm gate to the consumers’ plate.”

CEO and founder of Wyoming Authentic Products, Fales, spoke about his experience as National Group Marketing Manager for the J.R. Simplot Company based in Boise, Idaho. He said potato sales were plummeting when he took the position, and after some investigation, he realized it was because the Idaho branding had been removed. Fales convinced the company to re-establish – or differentiate – the products as Idaho potatoes, and sales skyrocketed.

“I saw the value of the origin of food,” he said.

Fales wrote the business plan for Wyoming Authentic Products eight years ago, and launched the company in October of 2013 in the first U.S. Department of Agriculture plant in Wyoming in many years. He currently owns about 7,500 retail
locations.