Farmer Makes Money From Corn Cobs

The idea for Krogh Family Farms Sweetened Spread and Syrup all started back when Randall Krogh, President of Krogh Family Farms, was a senior in high school.

Randall was a student at Exira High School in the lovely state of Iowa when he was challenged by his home economics teacher to find a great recipe and make it for the class. Randall went straight to his grandmother’s recipe box to see what he could find. To his surprise he found a recipe for corn cob jelly. He was sure the recipe would be a winner with his fellow classmates and teachers.

After finding the recipe, Randall took it to his home economics class and told everyone about his great idea to make jelly out of corn cobs. Everyone started laughing and carrying on about how they thought it was a ridiculous idea. Randall proved all of them wrong by winning the cooking contest and selling out of his product before he left school for the day.

Twenty Eight years later Randall was reading an article in the Omaha World Herald about a food product that an entrepreneur had discovered in her grandmother’s recipe box and has since made a business out of it. Randall was inspired by her story and in 2006 he started Krogh Family Farms Corn Cob Sweetened Spread. Randall partnered with the University of Nebraska Lincoln Food Entrepreneur Program to test the safety and nutrition of his product. After a successful safety test of the product, Randall was able to officially introduce Corn Cob Sweetened Spread to the market.

With the success of his sweetened spread, Randall was inspired to look through more of his grandmother’s recipes to see what he could come up with. He stumbled upon a recipe for homemade maple syrup. Randall was convinced that he could make the recipe out of corn cob extract. After a few experiments, Randall was able to come up with his delicious new recipe for Corn Cob Syrup. He was able to produce both products all naturally without the use of high fructose corn syrup. 

Randall continues to keep his entrepreneurial spirit and experiment with new products to see what he can come up with next!