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Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
93
Jeremy Wilhelm--Making a Difference at Frontier Cooperative
In this episode, we’re talking Nebraska—its people, its communities, and its number one industry: agriculture. And we’re doing so with someone who’s at the center of it all.
Our guest is Jeremy Wilhelm, Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Cooperative, a farmer-owned cooperative with locations across eastern Nebraska. Under Jeremy’s leadership, Frontier lives out its mission of empowering its team to provide experiences that help owners and communities prosper—guided by values like doing the right thing, making a difference, and creating opportunities.
From his small-town roots (including once being crowned King of the Groundhog Day Celebration in Unadilla, Nebraska) to leading a cooperative that serves farmers and strengthens communities, Jeremy brings a perspective that’s both deeply local and forward-looking.
Join us as we explore agriculture, community, and what it means to keep Nebraska strong.
Welcome to 93.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to Ninety Three the Podcast. I'm Mark Falton, your host for today's episode, brought to you by Nebraska's law firm, Rimbleck. Today's episode checks all of the boxes of this podcast. We're going to talk about Nebraska. We're going to talk about its communities. We're going to explore Nebraska's number one industry agriculture. And we're visiting with someone who's helping make all of that happen. Today's guest is Jeremy Wilhelm, Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Cooperative, a farmer-owned cooperative with locations across eastern Nebraska. Jeremy, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me. So give our listeners your background. Where do you hail from?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I grew up in Unadilla, Nebraska. So just get it out of the way. It's Odo County, County Plate number 11.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. And I think I ran into you a couple years ago at the Groundhog Day Festival and uh parade, right?
SPEAKER_00:It is the Groundhog Capital of Nebraska.
SPEAKER_02:How long has Unadill been doing that?
SPEAKER_00:Over 30 years. Okay. It's been celebrating.
SPEAKER_02:Have you been the ground marshal yet?
SPEAKER_00:I have been the Groundhog King. I was the Groundhog King in 2011.
SPEAKER_02:Being the king of the Groundhog Parade and Festival, what does that entail?
SPEAKER_00:You get to rule the kingdom for a year and make all the decisions in the community.
SPEAKER_02:And are there a lot of decisions?
SPEAKER_00:There are a few that we can't talk about on the curve.
SPEAKER_02:I love some of these uh small-town Nebraska traditions. So you grew up in Unadilla, where'd you go to high school?
SPEAKER_00:Syracuse High School.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Reactive in FFA?
SPEAKER_00:I was not. So coming through the 80s as a kid, um, we were all encouraged to get away from the farm, right? Do something else. And so that was at a point where FFA had about 4,000 students in Nebraska involved, which was a low point, uh, compared to today over 12,000, right? So I went on and got a business degree in college and got away from ag for a while.
SPEAKER_02:And where did you go to college?
SPEAKER_00:I went to Doan University. Crete, Nebraska. Crete. I was the black sheep of the family. My mom and dad both went to the university here in town, and both my brothers did too. But as it turns out, I had a a sports scholarship that made it a little bit cheaper than the university, so I went to Doan. And what sport? Football. Position. Tight end. And do you have any records at Doan? A few. Okay, do you really? Really? No, I don't. I I was I played a lot and we had a great time. We had a great team. We were undefeated our senior year and uh still have a lot of memories and a lot of friends from there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think you may be the first college football player we've had on this podcast. So that's our great. So after you graduated from uh Done, what did you do?
SPEAKER_00:Uh so I always had, you know, I grew up on the farm and always had ag in my background. Um, got into ag banking. So uh my business major just realized that, you know, growing up in the 80s, it seemed like the only person that had any money was the banker. And so I got into ag banking, started loaning money to feed lots uh throughout the Midwest, and that turned into loaning money to uh grain companies and turned into ethanol plants and had a nice little about a seven-year career in banking.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. And then from how did you get involved in the cooperatives?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so one of my um clients in the banking world was a privately held company, uh, ag company in California, and they wanted me to come out. And uh my wife and I, my wife's from western Nebraska, uh decided to move to California. What the heck? And uh what part? We were in the Central Valley.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, well, that's I mean I I I've been there and I think I was maybe surprised. I knew there was ag in California, but there's a lot of ag in California.
SPEAKER_00:If there's a place in California that reminds you of Nebraska, it's the Central Valley. Right. It's very lots of corn, lots of cotton, lots of dairy. We had more dairy cows in our county than people. Wow. So yeah, I did that in 11 years, ran the operations, we had feed mills, flour mills, uh, we had a pet food company. Uh my last project, we built a two and a half million uh cage-free egg-ling facility. So I was in the chicken business too.
SPEAKER_02:So uh so from there, how did you end up back in Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00:So we knew that we went out there, no kids, married no kids, uh, had three daughters while we lived out in California and decided we wanted to raise our kids back in Nebraska. And my predecessor at Frontier uh announced his retirement and I had a recruiting firm that reached out and said, Hey, do you want to move back to Nebraska? And we decided to do that. So uh we've been back here eight years now and living the good life.
SPEAKER_02:So uh it's my understanding Frontier had a significant merger back in I think 2019. Were you a part of that?
SPEAKER_00:I was, yeah. So I came on in 2017 and uh Frontier and Midwest Farmers Co-op uh in Elmwood, Nebraska decided to have discussions on merging together. Um it was it was really a great merger. It was the merger of equals. We were about the same size, about the same locations. Uh one was kind of north of Interstate 80, one was predominantly south of Interstate 80, and so we put that together in 2019.
SPEAKER_02:And that merger as a result uh today, how many locations or branches does Frontier have?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we've got 60 locations uh that buy grain, uh sell fertilizer, chemicals, and seed. Uh we also deliver fuel, whether it's propane to the house or shop or diesel fuel to the farm, and then we've got to feed operations as well. And where's the headquarters? We call it the home office. The home office is here in Lincoln. Uh we when we did the merger, put the merger together. Uh one headquarters was Brainerd, Nebraska, one was Elmwood, Nebraska. We just didn't have room to have the entire team together. And so we purchased a building here in Lincoln in 2019. We've been here since.
SPEAKER_02:Approximately how many folks does Frontier employ today?
SPEAKER_00:We have about 450 employees throughout those 60 locations.
SPEAKER_02:What's the furthest west in Nebraska you go?
SPEAKER_00:Uh we go Belgrade, Nebraska, so kind of north of Grand Island there a little bit, um, over to Howells, up to Howells. We go down to the over to the Iowa border, down to the Kansas border. We do a little bit of business in Kansas, a little bit of business in in Iowa, but we don't have any locations there.
SPEAKER_02:Explain to our listeners what a cooperative is. Uh, you know, what what what's the business model? Because it is unique, and perhaps uh I mean there's a long history behind it, but what is a cooperative?
SPEAKER_00:So a cooperative really is just like any other business, other than our owners are our customers or the farmers uh who we do business with are the owners of our company. They buy a share of stock. Um they don't have to do business with us, but they can choose to do business with us, and we're we're locally owned. Uh we're locally controlled. So the members uh they vote on and elect a board of directors each year, and that's who I report to. So some people will say I don't like my boss, but I've got 13 bosses that I report to.
SPEAKER_02:And those are all probably local farmers, right?
SPEAKER_00:They are all local farmers. And the one thing, you know, the the farmers earn equity in our company based upon the amount of business that they do with us, and we pay dividends back uh based upon the amount of business that they do. But the governance is one member is one vote. So it doesn't matter how big or small of a farmer are you are, you've got the same voting uh authority as as as your neighbor does.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell So I think the check you get from your co-op is called a patronage check, correct?
SPEAKER_00:It is. It is.
SPEAKER_02:And again, that depends upon how much business, in essence, you do with the company that you have an ownership interest in.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell, how much business you do and how successful the cooperative is.
SPEAKER_02:So looking at your website, Frontier offers diverse services from agronomy to green marketing to livestock feed to energy. Which of those areas do you see evolving most rapidly in the coming years?
SPEAKER_00:What we see today is a lot of technology advances in agronomy. And technology advances in agronomy creates bushels. And so uh we're really honed in on our agronomy side and trying to bring new products, uh, new ideas, new technology to our farmers because ultimately we want them to grow more bushels. We want to get more bushels from them and help them be successful so we can be successful.
SPEAKER_02:So one of the things I've noticed in technology on the agronomy side is the use of drones. Uh, does Frontier have any drones?
SPEAKER_00:We do. We have four drones. Uh we use some drones for scouting. Uh we can take a drone up in the air, we can get plant populations, we can see insects from the air. Um, but a lot of our drones are doing some spraying, some application, and it really comes in handy if you think about um even around Lincoln and Omaha, we've got some tight quarters, we've got residential places, places we don't want maybe a big rig going into or a plane flying over a lot of high line power lines that our drones come in extremely handy for that.
SPEAKER_02:So I was at Husker Harvest Days a few years ago, and I saw that they were testing a drone. And initially, when I heard that they're using drones for herbicide application or pesticide application, I was thinking the the drone that you buy at uh Best Buy or whatever. This thing was huge. I mean, it was to be able to, I guess, carry enough quantity. Uh, but I I have to estimate it was five to six feet across and with multiple uh propellers.
SPEAKER_00:They they do, they have multiple parallels on them. You don't want to get in their way. Uh they're big. And they carry up to 80 pounds of liquid, and uh some of them even bigger than that. And so they're they're big machines and they're all battery operated. Um they can run about 10 minutes, and then we've got to come down and change the batteries. But with 80 gallons or 80, 80 pounds of product, that's about the time that they need to be changed anyway. So have you learned how to drive one of those? You know, I've had a drone for a long time. Yeah, a personal drone.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um and I I just use it to it's just kind of a I don't know, you can take pictures from way up in the sky, and uh I just use it for recreational purposes. I don't actually spray anything with mine, but um but I probably had one for 10 years now.
SPEAKER_02:Other than drones, what other sort of technological advances do you see for Frontier?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we see a lot of things coming down the pipeline with with um varieties of seed, the seed genetics. Uh they continue to evolve and continue to be more drought resistant, uh, more strength from a wind resistant standpoint. Uh we also see a lot of advances in biologicals, micronutrients. So, how do we spoon feed that crop exactly what it needs to get the maximum production out of it? And that's if you look at at the manufacturing companies and and the technology that's being invested uh in agriculture today, it's it's really about how do we get more bushels with less inputs and more productivity.
SPEAKER_02:What do you see as the biggest challenges that lie ahead for agriculture in Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00:Well, short term, it's the economics. Um farmers are are struggling right now with input costs, uh, with repair costs, with insurance, with interest rates, um, and the commodity prices are low. So, you know, this year in in eastern Nebraska we're gonna have a lot of bushels. They're they're gonna be able to bushel the way through this year, but it's not gonna be fun. Um so the farm economics are are are tough today, and um and that has an impact on everybody, including the local cooperative. Um the other I I would say the other challenge that that um I see out here today is is I don't want to call it regulations, but we see, you know, I don't want to pick on lawyers here, but we see we see a lot of crazy lawsuits uh in the industry, whether it's um for chemical you know application or just what we don't want to do is is find ourselves in in a regulatory environment that is detrimental to what we're trying to do as a cooperative, as a farmer, and that's really feeding the world. And there's there's things out there that that maybe they want us to do that we can do it, um, but it sacrifices the production and sacrifices how much we can produce. And we we already have a country and we already have hungry people in Nebraska. Um so it's really detrimental to from that standpoint. Um and and I'm not sure it really accomplishes a whole lot at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02:It enriches the lawyers, right? It does enrich the lawyers, yes. So I was talking to uh uh the someone who's been involved in the egg industry for a really long time, and he gave me this prediction recently. He said, looking at the corn in Nebraska, which looks really, really good right now, especially even dry land corn, he said he thinks he will see more grain on the ground, storage of just piles of grain at storage facilities than probably he's ever seen in his lifetime. What do you see any issues with storage capacity coming up this fall? Absolutely. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:You know, as our our company, uh we generally have to move 10 to 12 million bushels out during harvest just to keep the doors open. Uh and that includes piling on the ground. Um three years ago, we had a really good crop and uh we moved 26 million bushels out during harvest. And so three two things that really need to happen for us to cooperate uh with Mother Nature this year, and and that is we need railroad performance, so we need to be able to move trains out during harvest, uh, get them to their destinations. And we we need a we don't need a harvest window that's 30 days, right? We need a kind of a normal harvest window that that's maybe spread out over 60 days, so it gives us time to to make space out there. But there are gonna be a lot of piles in Nebraska, and that's not uncommon, but they're just gonna be a few more this year and bigger.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Again, uh, people who maybe are not in agriculture, they say, well, it's gonna be a great harvest. Farmers gonna have a good year, and they don't realize just supply and demand, with the supply being that high, it's gonna have an impact on prices.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And and about half of our corn in our company goes out on rail. And that rail uh goes to California to feed mills, it goes to Mexico, it goes to the Gulf of Mexico, it goes to the Pacific Northwest. Um right now it's tough, tough to even get a rail bid for the fall, just because there's there's not a great lot of grain being exported right now. There's there's some counter tariffs that have people a little worried about what's that gonna look like. And so I think it'll come around, but it is is it is worrisome about everybody's gonna have a lot of grain, everybody's gonna want to move a lot of grain, and we just hope there's a place for it to go.
SPEAKER_02:What's the favorite part about your job?
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, absolutely. The working with the farmers, uh working in agriculture. Um you know, ag drives Nebraska's economy. Um the farmers are great to work with, they're just a great customer base, and and I just I love being part of of their work and their effort to to feed the world, and they they truly are feeding the world.
SPEAKER_02:Frontier is very active in the communities in which it operates. What are some of the ways in which Frontier gives back to its communities?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so communities are are part of our mission statement. Uh we we want to make choices in our company to help our communities be successful. And one of our vision statements is make a difference, and that's really for our employees. We we want them to make a difference at home in their communities. So you'll see us encourage our employees to be little exop all coaches, to be on the volunteer fire departments. Uh the vast majority of our employees live in in in the communities that they work in. And we're talking you know, most of our communities are that we have locations in are 500 people or less. And and if you look at how we we kind of tie our marketing dollars to the back to the community, um it it's really focused around egg education, ag safety, ag youth. So you'll see we're just coming off county fair season, and we were involved in I think 14 county fair parades. Uh we were serving hot dogs, we were serving watermelon.
SPEAKER_02:And you were at the premium auctions, because I went to four different county fairs for premium auctions, and at each one of those, Frontier was bidding on animals and giving back to those kids who showed livestock.
SPEAKER_00:We we do. We we do support you know the kids out there. And we do we think that that you know, 4H, FFA are really the future of agriculture, the future leaders of where we're going. So we're we're heavily involved with you know supporting FFA. We give out uh have a grant application for the local chapters that they can apply for grants that they need in their classroom, and some Frontier chooses who who to choose on those. And then uh we're supportive of the FFA Foundation and again truly believe that that we're seeing the future leaders in those organizations and wanna want to help develop that. And uh we got schools starting this week in a lot of communities. Um it's it's pretty hard to go without a week that we're not in a classroom somewhere. And it's it's really about teaching kids about not only cooperatives, but agriculture and where their food comes from and and the importance of agriculture in Nebraska.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell Speaking of Nebraska FFA and giving back to community, you personally are involved in the Nebraska FFA Foundation. In fact, you currently serve as the president of that board. Uh why are you involved with the Nebraska FFA Foundation and what does it do and how does it benefit Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell When I came to Frontier eight years ago, we started sponsoring um the foundation, and through that sponsorship, uh we got to meet with the FFA uh state officers. And I was so impressed and and have been impressed every year with the leaders that those officers are at such a young age. And then, you know, we we go to the convention, we get recognized, and just how that the state convention is orchestrated is beyond amazing. And everybody needs to witness it at some point in their life. And we just felt like it was our duty to be giving back to the foundation and helping support what the foundation is doing and really cultivating leaders and the leaders of agriculture tomorrow. And so um it's a it's a core part of Frontier, it's a core part of my wife and I. Um we just believe in believe in that organization.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I tell folks that if you're if you're down or feeling bad about the condition or state of our culture or the future of America, go to the Nebraska FFA convention and offer to judge one of their speaking or leadership contests. I I did that about 10 years ago for the first time. I try and do it every year now. And those kids are amazing. Like I went in a speaking contest or whatever it may be. It's like, you know what? I think we're okay. If these kids are going to be the next group of leaders leading Nebraska, leading the United States, I think we're in good hands.
SPEAKER_00:No, everybody always questions the young generations, but the future is bright. These kids are exceptional.
SPEAKER_02:So you mentioned you grew up in the 80s, which led you to initially pursue an occupation out of ag. I I did as well. I was actually an ag major, but everyone said ag was dead and to go do something else. And so that's how I found my way as being a lawyer. What do you tell kids today that maybe are contemplating a career in ag or going to college and studying ag? What do you tell them about the opportunities that exist in agriculture today as compared to when you and I grew up in the 1980s?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I would say today, you know, we're a cooperative, but we're no different than any other business. So we have CPAs on staff, we have human resource people on staff, IT, um, you know, any any position that a a normal business would have, we have that in our company. And in Nebraska, uh we've got agriculture's here to stay, right? We we have three things in Nebraska that really make us unique and why we're such an ag based state. We have water, whether it's natural rainfall on the eastern part of Nebraska or the Ogadala aquifer, we've got some of the most productive soil and we've got great infrastructure, right? We have six railroads facilities that can bring product in, take product out and you have those three things. You're gonna be producing agriculture and and being a leader in the world of agriculture production for a long, long time. And so, you know, they say one in every four jobs in Nebraska is tied back to agriculture. And I don't see that changing. Um I see agriculture just continuing to boom in in the Midwest here.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell So one problem that many ag producers face uh is finding human capital, finding a sufficient number of employees. Is that something that Frontier has faced or maybe been a hurdle? And if so, how have you tried to overcome that hurdle?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so obviously it labor's a big issue for everybody. We we've solved that issue up until now with bigger equipment, right? Bigger uh elevators, bigger combines, bigger trucks. Um I'm not sure we can get much bigger and much faster than what we are today, right? To be able to go up and down the road. And so we we look at automation, right? I I can build a a new grain facility that is three times the size of of the average of ours and it and it takes a third of the less people, right? It's just there's more automation and but the good side of that is is is it helps us with our labor issue. The downside if the internet goes down I can't run the I can't run the facility. Right, right. But so I think I think automation and then you know for us to continue to we we have relied on on some visa programs that are out there. They're they're a big hurdle to get over so we've been lobbying with not only in DC on how do we make that process easier because there are people that uh we have 23 South Africans that are here and they can't find jobs at home. And so they move here for 10 months, work for us and then go back for two months and they're just happy to have a job. They love it here. They want to be here full time but the visa program doesn't let them do that. And so we have relied on that it's we don't think it's a long-term solution. We hope it's not a long term solution but it's it's helping us get through the short term and and there's a lot of farmers out there that have taken advantage of the same program.
SPEAKER_02:I'd be interested I wish someone had data on this you're the third guest on this podcast that has talked about South African immigrants working in ag I've experienced myself I tell the story I was at a local case he's down by Crete and I heard this accent that I wasn't familiar with standing behind me conclude the gentleman were from South Africa.
SPEAKER_00:There are a significant number of South Africans working in agriculture in the state of Nebraska there is I I don't I can't tell you the number um but I know just in the cooperative world there's well over 250 and um and like I said there's a lot of farmers that that are you utilizing that program as well.
SPEAKER_02:And I've yet to hear have anyone say anything but positive things about their work ethic and their their attitude and their behavior.
SPEAKER_00:They acclimate themselves so well into the communities and we hear lots of stories of you know our H2 workers they'll get invited over to our farmer's house for Thanksgiving or for Christmas and they just blend in really well and people love having them and and they're good workers too and they're bright and uh they just have a a a really bad situation back home. Right.
SPEAKER_02:So well uh the door's open to all South Africans we want you here in Nebraska and anyone else who wants to move to Nebraska because we we need bodies to work. Well one of the cool things that came out of your merger was I know you guys redesigned your logo and if you look folks if you look closely at the Frontier logo the O in Frontier has an underline it's a little smaller and underline. What's the story behind that?
SPEAKER_00:You know when when we came through the merger uh we we had the we liked the Frontier name it was kind of the old cursive looked like it was made in the 1980s and we wanted to to kind of rebrand it and make it a little bit bolder and uh one of the ideas was to underline that O. And a lot of people ask why and we said well that's that's the reason we underlined it so you would ask about it and you would notice it but it means it can mean a lot of different things. We we think it it means it differentiates ourselves out of the box uh thinking to help bring better solutions to the grower. Some of our employees think it it's it it it uh symbolizes a a day's hard work and the sun kind of setting setting over the horizon. I just call it outstanding. And so it can mean a lot of different things but it it is something to try to set us apart. There is you know there's right in town here there's a Frontier Harley Davidson there's Frontier Airlines there's Frontier Communications there's two other Frontier co-ops one in Iowa one in in Kansas and so we want to differentiate ourselves. I think you clearly have done so Jeremy one thing we ask all of our guests and you get one word what is one word that best describes to you this place in which you were born and raised where you attended uh Doan University uh where you currently are the CEO of Frontier Cooperative what's your one word for Nebraska I I would have to use the word people um we meet a lot of people from out of the state and they always comment how nice people from Nebraska are and and I I equate that back to our agricultural roots our farmers you know they're salt of the earth they're entrepreneurs they're stewards of the land uh they're hard workers self-driven um and and they're innovators and I think that in combination with just you know they're so great to work with and so great to be around I think that just reflects the state of Nebraska so I have to use the word people and I think that revolves and roots back to agriculture. I like it.
SPEAKER_02:Jeremy thanks for joining us folks if you enjoyed this episode consider subscribing on Apple Spotify or wherever it is you get your favorite podcasts and be certain to share it with someone who might find it of interest. And please keep on listening as we release additional episodes on Nebraska it's great communities Nebraska's number one industry agriculture includes all the corn we're going to produce this fall as well as the folks who make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. This has been Nighty three the podcast sponsored by Nebraska's law firm Rumbold Ludkey
