Idaho

Why One Spirits Company Is Betting On Regenerative Ag And Farmers In Idaho

Published

1 year ago

December 12, 2024

Why One Spirits Company Is Betting On Regenerative Ag And Farmers In Idaho

Family-owned spirits and wine company Chatham Imports is betting on Idaho farmers and distillers to … [+] produce a Regenerative Organic Gin

Chatham Imports

Regenerative agriculture is cropping up around the world. The Regenerative Organic Alliance announced that more than 18 million acres are farmed using their certification practices. In the US, it’s a fraction of that — around 130,000 acres.

Tim Cornie is one of those select farmers pioneering regenerative organic. Situated near Buhl, Idaho, his 800-acre farm grows a variety of wheat, heirloom grains (such as Tibetan purple barley), beans, and popping corn. Much of it goes to his 250,000 square-f00t facility about 8 miles from the farm. He bought an old Pillsbury plant and converted it into a space that houses not just his own crops, but that of fellow farmers in the area.

Tim Cornie of 1000 Springs Mill inspecting a field of buckwheat.

Esha Chhabra

Some of his crop — particularly the wheat— travels about 200 miles to eastern Idaho where its turned into alcohol. Gray Ottley runs the first organic certified distillery in the United States, Distilled Resources, Inc. It just happens to be a few hours from Cornie’s farm. That’s what led the family-owned spirits company Chatham Imports to develop an all-American gin, Farmer’s Gin, which is now the first-of-its-kind using primarily Regenerative Organic Certified ingredients.

Cornie, who has been farming for over 30 years, says regenerative is the way forward. “A lot of it is common sense. If you look after the soil, it looks after you.” But it’s taken years of learning (and sometimes failing) to come to this realization.

And like many farmers, he too has leaned on the experience of others before to him to figure out how to do this successfully for the land — but also for the business. For him, that mentor and friend has been Nate Jones, an organic pioneer in Idaho. Jones had been advocating for organic farming in the region since the ’80s. Incidentally, Jones fell into organic farming for financial reasons. “I was going broke as a small-scale farmer. The model wasn’t working. It was too expensive to sustain. So I needed a niche, and another farmer who was growing garlic organically helped me covert over.”

Tim Cornie (left) with Nate Jones (right) in Idaho.

Esha Chhabra

Today, he farms more than 700 acres, like Cornie. The duo meet up and talk pest control, cover crops, weed abatement, soil, and experimental patches in their fields that may or may not have panned out. “It’s a lot of trial and error, even if you know what you’re doing,” says Cornie.

But Jones didn’t just advocate for organic farming. He also included some regenerative practices: such as using cover crops and rotation cycles. Today, he says the organic industry is becoming “commodotized” and that’s pushing prices downward. It’s also a lot a “substitute farming,” he says, where farmers are simply using market-bought fertilizers and pesticides that are organic-approved to swap out the conventional ones. They’re not really experimenting with crops, weed management, and rotation cycles to improve the soil’s potential. That is true organic farming, in his opinion — and one that’s now being identified more with regenerative organic.

Though both Cornie and Jones do admit that their ways can be more expensive, and sometimes require more labor, with smaller yields, it can pay off. For one, they see it in their soils. “I don’t like to brag,” jokes Jones, “but I’ve got a neighbor that can see my farm from his, and he’s said to me, ‘That soil is just unbelievable.’”

Cornie chimes in, “Ya, I always joke that the ducks like to come to my field of corn, rather than going to the neighbors. They know which one is healthier.”

But there’s one key advice that Jones imparted to Cornie (and advises other farmers who want to get into regenerative organic farming): “Have a buyer. Have a market ready for your crop always. Otherwise, it’s much harder.”

That’s where Chatham Imports comes in. The company agreed to buy Cornie’s wheat in advance. With that in mind, Cornie can grow the crop without worry. Unlike some of the other beans and grains he’s got in the field destined for his own brand, the wheat has a home.

It’s trucked down to Ottley’s distillery, which in many ways is an extension of Cornie’s eco-minded philosophy: the facility has run on wind energy for nearly two decades, been certified organic since 2000, and is helping support the local ecology.

Gray Ottley of Distilled Resources, Inc in Idaho.

Distilled Resources, Inc

Ottley and Cornie actually met a decade ago. “In 2015, we met Tim Cornie and he was beginning to build out his new business, 1000 Springs Mill, in Buhl. It was the perfect match for us. Because not only did he grow the wheat, he also milled it, which is something we’d have to do offsite.”

Ottley was excited about the prospect that every step of the process could be traced. “The chain of custody,” he says, “can now trace from the dirt it was grown in by the farmers, to where it was milled and then to the facility it was boiled in, fermented, and distilled. That’s what organic is all about. It’s about the traceability of the agricultural product through to a finished product for humans.”

And Ottley was especially excited to see that Cornie was interested in sustainable and regenerative farming — given that each bottle of gin uses about 2.5 pounds of wheat. “It’s good to know that we’re able to support a more sustainable future as well with our hero ingredient.”

That hero ingredient then goes through a detailed process that Ottley says could include a 100 variables before one lands on an alcohol that has a “sweet flavor in the front of the tongue, is smooth in the throat, and doesn’t, what we say ‘burn the gill,’ going down. Farmer’s Gin has that smooth, sippable quality.”

Priced at around $30, it’s not the cheapest of the gins. But there’s a reason for that. “How are we going to support these farms, these communities with bottom-of-the-barrel commodity pricing? We need a better model,” says Cornie, driving through the back roads of Buhl.

For him, gin is just the beginning, and one of the many tentacles to his operation. But he hopes that more companies back America’s regenerative organic farmers who are looking for a healthier model for farmers and the soil. “We’ve got to start eating better, and looking after ourselves better. At the root of all that is farming.”

Cornie hopes that, in addition to being the farmer of Farmer’s Gin, his own brand 1000 Springs Mill can help Americans discover a pantry of US-grown regenerative organic everyday staples, which he sells to grocers across the US and online directly.

Source link

Related Topics:Featured gin Idaho organic organic alcohol organic grains organic wheat regenerative agriculture regenerative organic ROC Spirits

Click to comment

Idaho

‘Unrelenting’: Statehouse reporters recap 2026 legislative session in Idaho Falls – East Idaho News

Published

1 hour ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

‘Unrelenting’: Statehouse reporters recap 2026 legislative session in Idaho Falls – East Idaho News

IDAHO FALLS — Two prominent Idaho Statehouse reporters say this past legislative session was “unrelenting,” chaotic, largely driven by budget cuts, and they see the Legislature getting more powerful.

Kevin Richert and Clark Corbin recapped this past legislative session at a forum on the ISU Idaho Falls Campus on Thursday.

Richert is a senior reporter at Idaho Education News, with more than 30 years of experience covering education policy and politics. Corbin is a senior reporter at the Idaho Capital Sun who has covered every Idaho legislative session, gavel to gavel, since 2011.

The event was hosted by the City Club of Idaho Falls, which “exists to sponsor and promote civil dialogue and discourse on all matters of public interest” and strives to be “nonpartisan and nonsectarian,” according to its website.

Budget cuts

Both Richert and Corbin said this session was driven by budget cuts. Corbin said this was due to a lack of revenue stemming from past income tax and the adoption of new federal tax cuts.

“Cuts for almost every state agency and state department dominated the legislative session,” Corbin said. “We’re talking about 4% budget cuts for most state agencies and departments in the current fiscal year, and we’re talking about an additional 5% budget cuts for almost all state agencies and departments starting next year — fiscal year ’27 — and continuing permanently.”

RELATED | Gov. Little signs so-called ‘crappy bill’ to cut state budget

Richert said he thought higher education was taking the brunt of budget cuts. “It’s not a question of whether tuition fees are going to go up at the universities; it’s a question of how much,” he said.

When asked what the future would hold, Corbin said the budget cuts aren’t likely to go away, and their effects will be felt over time.

“There could always be a change of leadership in the House, but they do expect the budget crunch to continue in the next year’s legislative session,” Corbin said.

‘Radiator capping’

Richert said he has one word to describe this year’s legislative session: “unrelenting.”

One thing that made it feel that way was that some bills were recycled over and over, he said. For example, Richert said the Legislature saw five different versions of a bill that proposed cuts to the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance.

“We had multiple bills that came from the dead,” he said.

The journalists said this is partly due to a tactic called “radiator capping.” The term means to replace the entire car — the bill’s text, in political terms — while only keeping the radiator cap: the bill number. By rewriting a bill on the House or Senate floor while maintaining its number, failed bills can effectively bypass the committee process.

“Those are the changes they tried to make on immigration bills, on union bills this year,” Corbin said. “It made it extremely difficult for the public to have any idea what was going on, to have any opportunity to participate in the legislative process and share their opinions.

A more powerful, more chaotic Legislature

Richert said Idaho’s annual legislative sessions are trending longer, commonly going into the early part of April, and producing a record number of bills.

“There are rumblings that this Legislature, as a body, is wanting to expand its reach over more and have even more power over the other branches of government to the point of — are we trending towards more of a full-time professional legislature?” Richert said. “We’re a long way from there.”

“The legislative branch of government, particularly the Idaho House of Representatives, is the most powerful I’ve seen it in 16 years of covering state government,” Corbin said.

He added that this year’s legislative session was unlike any he’s experienced.

“The overall temperature in the building was bad,” Corbin said. “It was divisive. It was chaotic. People were not hiding their feelings of disgust for each other. These traditional ideas of decorum and respect very much fell by the wayside.”

Richert said Gov. Brad Little vetoed very few bills that came across his desk, and the ones he did weren’t high-profile.

RELATED | Idaho Gov. Brad Little issues 5 vetoes. Here are the bills affected

“I think the governor behaved like he was very concerned about the supermajority-controlled Legislature, and I think that that Legislature, in turn, asserted itself and took control of the agenda this year,” Corbin said.

Are legislators representing Idaho?

Corbin said some bills this year also focused on the LGBTQ+ community, such as a bathroom restriction for transgender individuals, and a bill that banned the City of Boise from waving a Pride flag.

RELATED | Idaho governor signs bill to criminalize trans people using bathrooms that align with their identity

RELATED | Boise removes LGBTQ+ pride flag as Idaho governor signs bill to fine city for its display

When asked if these were what Idahoans wanted, Corbin said it doesn’t necessarily appear so to him, based on his review of Boise State University’s annual public policy survey.

“For years and years, I’ve heard concerns about affordability of housing, access to housing, managing the growth of the state of Idaho, having quality public schools available for our young people — that also generates a workforce pipeline for some of our businesses,” Corbin said. “I’ve heard about paying for wildfires. I’ve heard about having good roads, supporting access to public lands, public recreation, those are the concerns I hear from Idahoans.”

“But the Legislature spent a significant amount of time over the last two, three, four years placing additional restrictions on LGBTQ communities, placing restrictions on what teachers can and cannot teach in their classrooms, what school boards can and cannot do,” Corbin continued. “They talked about requiring a moment of silence every day to begin the public school day, where children could pray or read the Bible.”

RELATED | Gov. Brad Little signs public school ‘moment of silence’ bill into law

Corbin said it may be his own opinion, but perhaps it is easier to “make a bunch of noise about what’s going wrong and (distract) people with social issues” rather than focus on harder issues that Idaho faces.

“I think what you saw on the policy space is a reflection of the fact that you had legislators thinking about reelection, and legislators with time on their hands — and that’s not always a good combination,” Richert said.

Accountability

When asked how people can keep legislators accountable, Corbin said it can be done by following the state Legislature through trusted news sources, going to community events and voting.

“This is a great year to practice accountability, because all 105 state legislators and all statewide elected officials are up for election this year,” he said.