Special Report

National proficiency winner found niche in straw

When school was out following Ben Niendick’s eighth grade year, he began making square straw bales.

“For me, this was a way to start my own business while not interfering with any of my dad’s enterprises,” Niendick told Brownfield Ag News at the National FFA Convention in Louisville, Ky.

The first summer, Niendick put up 1,600 bales and sold every one of them by the next fall. So far this fall, he’s sold about three-quarters of the 31,000 bales he made this past summer. That and other enterprises earned him the FFA National Proficiency Award in Agricultural Sales Entrepreneurship.

“I have 80 acres of rented row crops; I hope to expand that area of my SAE [supervised agricultural experience]. I also do feeder cattle backgrounding as well as finishing out feeder cattle and I hope to expand all those areas, and eventually make my living in production agriculture after college,” he said. “I’m a sophomore right now at Mizzou [The University of Missouri] majoring in ag business.”

Other than tacking a business card here and there or making his services known on Craig’s list, Niendick is low key about advertising. But he does not leave sales to chance.

“If I see a construction company doing a big project while I’m going down the road I might just stop and see who I need to talk to; this pipeline [currently under construction], I saw that it was coming through the state and got on the phone and made quite a few phone and was able to get ahold of that,” he said. “There’s plenty of opportunities to sell straw, you just kind of got to go out and find them.”

Niendick is from the Wellington-Napoleon FFA Chapter in Missouri.

AUDIO: Ben Niendick (3 min. MP3)