We were fortunate to catch partner and agronomist Scott Ebelhar, CEO Albert Peterson, and David Peterson in the same place at the same time on one gray January day. Hearing them recount the past, present, and future of Peterson Farms made for an informative visit. 

According to Peterson's family genealogy, there have been farmers in the family for 13 consecutive generations. It’s also worth mentioning that your last name doesn’t have to be Peterson to play a key role (and become a partner) in Peterson Farms. That, combined with the farm’s core values and mission statement, shows just how forward-thinking this Loretto-based operation really is.  

Looking Back

The story begins with John C. Peterson, Albert’s great-grandfather, who was a dairyman at heart. During his tenure, John and his family had an on-farm bottling business selling milk to local families under the name 7 Sons. Eventually, large milk processors made on-farm bottling non-competitive, but John was adaptable. This trait has been passed down through his eleven children and 55 grandchildren.  

In 1946, William B. and Rosemary Peterson, Albert’s grandparents, were married. Their story was similar to many of their day. They milked cows for their dairy and had some chickens and hogs—but not a lot of crop land. They, along with their eight children, are considered to be the beginning of the modern-day Peterson Farms.

The next Bill, Albert’s father, and William B. were partners in the original Loretto Grain, which started as a co-op in 1966. They bought out each of the four other co-op partners over the years, eventually becoming the sole owner. At the time, the elevator had a 36-foot bin, and the neighbors said, “You’ll never fill it.” Wonder what they’d say about the Petersons’ current 3.4 million bushel storage capacity?

According to David, Albert’s uncle, the Petersons planted their first soybean crop in 1975 and continued the dairy and hog operations. Peterson Farms has been a strict grain operation since 1999, and David said he was not too sad to see the cows leave.  

As time passed, Albert, his father Bill, and uncles David and Bernard chose to focus on no-till crop production, supplying the growing bourbon industry with ingredients needed to make magic in a bottle. 

Today

Business is booming at Peterson Farms, and it’s led by the team shown on the facing page. Their enterprises currently consist of non-GMO soybeans, corn, wheat, seed conditioning, grain merchandising, and industrial hemp oil. Peterson Farms’ 2023 crop was certified as Regenerative, and that leads us to one of the more visible members of the family, Bernard Peterson. Bernard is known as the niche man, the marketing man, and the CFO.

“Bernard is the man behind the idea for containerized soybeans,” Ebelhar said. “We started out filling barges of non-GMO soybeans for various customers and shipping them out of Owensboro and Jeffersonville,” he said. “As Bernard built the business, buyers started coming with more specialized requests. They asked for some variety-specific contracts, and we started segregating in order to do barge quantities of them. Seven or eight years ago, we built a grain-cleaning facility in part to clean and condition wheat and non-GMO seed beans. That presented us with the opportunity to load containers right here on the farm.” 

“We build our own container loader,” David echoed. “We can load a container in 10 to 15 minutes, within just a few pounds.  We clean to spec for FM (foreign matter), and the grain is inspected by a federal grader before he seals the container here on site.” Ebelhar added that the trucks are loaded while on the scales, so the process is quite efficient.

We happened to visit on a day that containers were being loaded, and the process is pretty impressive. Ebelhar said that while there have been some challenges—as with any new endeavor—the end result has been well worth the growing pains. Customer service and being responsive to the buyers’ needs are key pillars of Peterson Farms’ core values, and this team makes sure that customers get what they need. 

Ebelhar said that the leadership team meets three times per year offsite to lay out goals for the upcoming year and to check in on successes and opportunities thus far in the current year. They meet weekly to see where they are in the short term, and there’s a morning huddle at 7:30 each morning, led by Operations Manager Jeff Bartley.  

Education is another top priority at Peterson Farms. Those in positions of leadership have both formal educations (including numerous Master’s Degrees) and several years of on-the-job management and leadership experience. Several key members of the leadership team are alumni of The Executive Program for Agricultural Producers (TEPAP) program at Texas A&M University.

In addition to continued education for team members, the Petersons have an internship program through which they offer  
real-life, on-farm experiences for students. For the past decade and a half, they’ve worked with The Ohio Program through The Ohio State University and provided learning experiences to students, both domestic and international. “We’ve had interns, usually in agronomy or operations, from Zimbabwe, Denmark, Poland, Argentina, Colombia, Scotland, and Brazil, just to name a few,” Albert said.

For those of us familiar with Kentucky agriculture, it’s difficult to think of Peterson Farms without bourbon coming to mind. They’ve been the sole source of wheat for Maker’s Mark distillery (also located in Loretto) for 35 or 40 years, and about 75 percent of their corn goes to Buffalo Trace. 

“We are fortunate to have a number of marketing opportunities,” Ebelhar said. “And we have just built a new elevator in Danville. It’s currently set up for corn and wheat, but customers are already inquiring about soybeans, too.”

Looking to the Future

With so many products, opportunities, and strengths, we hesitate to speculate on what’s next for Peterson Farms. An educated guess following our visit would be that Albert has a few ideas up his sleeve, and Bernard never stops finding niche markets that Ebelhar says complement their core competencies. 

One of the latest niches is Widow Jane Heirloom Corn. “it’s a red corn used for bourbon,” Ebelhar said, “and it’s a short maturing variety. We already have the ground and the equipment, so there’s no capital investment required. That mitigates our risk, and there’s a premium on this product, so why not give it a try?” 

This author is willing to bet that’s not the only new thing they’re trying at Peterson Farms, and she’s watching very closely.