We recently connected with Patrick Conrey and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

Farming is unique in many ways. One way is that the industry boasts very high market concentration (CR-4). Pick your poison wether it’s meat packing, milling, grocery distribution, agricultural chemicals or oil seed processing. In the oil processing industry, The Oil Barn thinks it can make a change. Safflower, our oil specialty, is in the thistle plant genus. The drought tolerance of thistles comes from their deep tap roots. Safflower has the deepest tap root of any annual plant. Imagine a carrot extending down up to 18′.

Here in the West drought tolerance should be an important crop feature that is considered on farms. Unfortunately, if we follow the money it leads to high water consuming crops like corn and alfalfa. These crops pay farmers high dollar amounts per acre while consuming large amounts of resources including our precious Western water.

To change the debt-leveraged resource consuming model of conventional agriculture The Oil Barn pays farmers directly to grow organic high-oleic safflower. There are no middle men so as much money can go directly where it needs in order for more sustainable crop options to become viable on the farm level.

By venturing beyond the olive and trying out safflower in your pans at home you support an alternative method to “the way it’s done”. Enjoy high-oleic safflower to sear, bake, pop pop-corn or use in your salad dressings. It has the same healthy fats as olive oil!

Patrick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I joined the U.S. Navy after attending CSU. Being abroad to serve and protect American interests made me ask the question, “What are America’s interests?” I felt that I went abroad to serve a country and values system that I had a deep respect for. Critical examination makes you realize that we are commercialized and killing ourselves as we do it. It seems suicidal and against our nature to be living while extinguishing our future potential to live.

This realization led me to our relationship with food. Agriculture is a key-stone that needs to be relaid.

I don’t recall the exact statistic, when I returned to CSU, post military, to study soil and crop sciences some 800 business degrees had been earned in a semester while only 40 agriculture degrees had been. We need people who can solve problems and build businesses to take them on. I’m proud of what The Oil Barn has done in two years. I use our oil in my own kitchen and I will feed it to my grandkids. I hope they feed it to theirs as well.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Last summer I scaled up the retail farmers market presence around the state. I took a model that worked well for me and multiplied it by 10x. In my mind’s eye I thought it would work well. It did not. I did not have the resources nor time to train market staff properly. I ended up pissing away over $10,000 dollars of my own money. I’m still working to pay back debts. The lost money has hampered growth. The mission and “why” carry me forward.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Finding organic high-oleic safflower seed to plant may seem easier than expected. I called many different seed distributors throughout Colorado, Utah, Montana… you name it. No one had any. I had recently read a book titled Grain by Grain by a man name Bob Quinn. I emailed his safflower business owned in Montana and told him my plans and sent him basically all of the documents that explained my plan. He said “Sure, come on up!” The seed needed to be planted very soon as safflower takes 120 days to mature (That’s a long growing season). Off I drove to Bob’s farm with my beautiful girlfriend Melissa.

I picked up seed to plant and they asked me to go into business with them. It’s been a fun ride and Bob is an incredible entrepreneur with much passion and enthusiasm for life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theoilbarncolorado.com
• Instagram: @theoilbarncolorado