Frank Grenaway has farmed on three continents: growing up in France, building a farm from 1,800 to 10,000 acres in Saskatchewan, teaching tractor efficiency to farmers in Haiti, and now running a regenerative wheat operation outside Three Forks, Montana. He talks through the 2004 frost that nearly ended the Saskatchewan farm, the grain-burning stove business that helped carry them through it, and why he eventually sold a 10,000-acre operation to start over smaller and closer to the people eating what he grows. The conversation closes on his case for reducing synthetic fertilizer use through better research rather than regulation.
Frank Grenaway has farmed in four countries. He grew up on a small farm in France, chased wide open spaces to Iowa, built an 1,800-acre Saskatchewan farm into 10,000 acres, then sold it, taught farmers in Haiti to use tractors more efficiently, and eventually landed on a wheat farm outside Three Forks, Montana, at the headwaters of the Missouri River.
What he's building there now is deliberately smaller and more direct: regenerative wheat, milled into flour, sold to people whose names he actually knows.
What's Inside
- Why Frank believes farming can produce more with meaningfully less synthetic fertilizer, and what the research already shows
- The difference between selling a truckload of grain to an elevator and milling flour for a customer you know by name
- A 2004 frost that cost the farm 180,000 dollars in one night, and how a grain-burning stove business helped carry them through it
- What changed when Frank's family sold their 10,000-acre Saskatchewan farm to start over in Montana
- His case against fertilizer-reduction mandates, and what he'd do instead to get producers there voluntarily
- Why he thinks the real disconnect isn't between farmers and government, it's between farmers and the people eating their food
Connect with Franck:
Website: https://livingskygrains.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/franckgroeneweg/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livingskygrains/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingSkyGrains/
Email: franck@livingskygrains.com
Phone: 406-521-5234
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