Arnusch Farms is in a constant state of evolution. Specifically, its CEO Marc Arnusch says they reinvent 10% to 15% of the operation every year.
“A lot of farmers will measure success on a balance sheet or rate of growth. We measure ours on implementation of successful ventures,” Arnusch says. “This could look like a different planting technique, cultural practices or something as complex as adding a crop like black eye peas, or a value-added process such as in the craft grains space that would get us one more rung up the ladder.”
For his leadership on his farm, growth of the business and excellence in entrepreneurism, Arnusch was named the 2025 Top Producer of the Year, sponsored by BASF, Fendt and Rabo AgriFinance.
“Looking in the rear view mirror, we understand the tradition and history that brought us here. But we aren’t a ditto of my dad’s operation or our neighbor’s.”
Decommoditize Products
Located in Colorado’s Prospect Valley, Arnusch Farms grows more than half a dozen crops across 3,000 acres.
“My tenure of leading the farm will be one of change. We are always pivoting,” he says.
Alongside his wife, Jill, who works as the farm’s controller, guideposts in business include tracking business metrics, such as revenue growth, profit margin, asset expansion, risk management and capital reinvestment. Rooted in data for his decisions, Arnusch is empowered to make tough realizations, such as one 20 years ago seeing how diversifying into nine different crops didn’t equate to profitability. That pivot led to a focus on value-added crops.
While his family’s legacy goes back to immigrating to the U.S. and to eastern Colorado to specifically grow sugar beets, Arnusch led the divergence from tradition to seek profitability and greater opportunities. Today, that vision has manifested into growing grains for the craft beer and spirits industry, which are used at 450 brewers and more than 30 distilleries.
“Looking in the rear view mirror, we understand the tradition and history that brought us here. But we aren’t a ditto of my dad’s operation or our neighbor’s,” Arnusch says.
At the root of his desire to be agile is to be able to recognize the risk that is inherent to production agriculture.
High risk, high reward has been a lesson learned firsthand. One example is the accelerated approach he took to growing onions, going from zero acres to being the third largest onion processor, packer and shipper in the state in four years. But that growth was abruptly met with labor issues at harvest, paralyzing the operation.
Arnusch shares while he’s driven to be nimble and stay flexible, when opportunities arise, he’s learned to balance the excitement of opportunity with a systems approach.
Arnusch has become a student of external forces and how they create opportunity.
“I watch trends. I used to watch them on the national scale. But I started to become more focused on the local side. Our venture into food grade corn, it wasn’t for alcohol, it was for the growing Hispanic population in the West, and therefore the expanding market for tortillas. That’s what had me asking questions like, could we play in that space? Could we grow that crop?”
Arnusch says the industry is often too focused on the current growing season or maybe the next, and something he’s found that sets him apart is his focus on the future.
“We have to focus on 25 years out, and we’re asking ourselves: Will the business still be relevant then?” he says. “My grandfather floated the ocean in 1952. He wanted to grow sugar beets. We may follow that signal, and go where food grade corn is grown, or cereal grains for spirits can be grown.”
AI Game Changer
To give certainty to decisions and reduce blind spots, Marc Arnusch says there is no tool like artificial intelligence.
“For a farm business, this is a bigger game changer than GPS and autosteer,” he says.
Mostly leaning on Chat GPT and Grok, Arnusch says the tools help on the strategic side of things as they narrow down potential decisions into a handful of options instead of an unmanageable amount.
“I set my phone on the console of the truck, talk to AI, outlining what is the problem, where are the challenges, and it helps me narrow my focus,” he says. “Then, most often, I talk with my wife, Jill, and instead of telling her 50 different angles to a story, we have a much more focused conversation in how we problem solve.”
Arnusch admits he believes AI will bring more positives to the industry, but regardless of an personal position on the technology, he encourages every farm to be aware and try it.
Exemplify Resiliency
“We are in the de-risk business,” he says. “We pride ourselves on seeing around the corner, understanding what we can control and insuring against what we can’t control.”
He points to two breakthroughs.
One is moving away from yield protection and revenue protection. Instead, since 2012 they have been a pilot farm for Whole Farm Revenue Protection insurance with NAU Country Farm Insurance Company.
“We are insuring our farmgate revenue over a five-to-six-year period. It allowed us to have predictability for farm gate revenue. It allowed us to insure crops we didn’t otherwise have coverage — like alfalfa. And we took risks with specialty crops that were high risk and high reward,” he says.
Arnusch says it also simplified the claims process, which relies on tax record information, which has already been aggregated.
The second risk management tool Arnusch says was a breakthrough is joining a captive insurance company 25 years ago. The first captive company he joined was via Colorado Corn Growers to underwrite workman’s compensation insurance. Since then, he’s joined a diversified group of business owners to form his current captive pool, with about 120 policy holders.
“Our risk is spread across industries such as construction, real estate and medical,” he says. “That diversification helps us manage exposure and better understand our insurance needs. It’s also allowed us to identify and insure areas we hadn’t considered before — things like cybersecurity, key personnel and certain property and casualty coverages.”
The captive provides error and omission coverage, which includes an instance for coverage in the first year of participation when a seed customer received the wrong herbicide- tolerant seed, a $54,000 mistake. The captive company adjudicated the claim, and Arnusch says the customer was retained.
Change has also illustrated itself in him stopping ventures or services he’s provided.
“We exited the wheat seed business in 2023. I pride myself on doing a good job for the customer, and I wasn’t able to service the customer as I wanted,” he says. “When service starts to suffer, something needs to change.”
Environmental Steward
Where he farms in Weld County, Colo., there are two water sources: surface water diverted from the South Platte River and the Lost Creek aquifer. He saw this as an opportunity to form a water leasing business, Ag Water Alliance.
“We have dependable water supply, but there are competing interests, mostly municipal, some industry,” he says. “We created an opportunity to lease water rights for a number of years to the energy sector.”
The income from the water rights has helped buffer the variability in ag profitability. For example, in 2018, a series of 11 hail storms led to Arnusch Farms harvesting only 22% of their planted acres. Without the combination of crop insurance, property and casualty insurance and water leasing revenue, the farm might not have been able to persevere.
Arnusch has also weighed the value of the water with crop productivity and soil health to implement a rotation of idling acres, planting cover crops and applying manure.
Employer of Choice
Arnusch says as a leader on the farm, he’s most proud of how he’s invested his time into focusing on creating a culture for the team.
“One of the ways we’ve improved communication is our approach to meetings, which we changed in 2021, with the goal of having everyone ‘in the know,’” he says.
Every Monday, the week starts with a 30 minute all-team meeting talking about jobs of the week, metrics on performance and setting schedule expectations. It also includes a brainstorming session.
“We belt and suspender the weekly meetings with 10 minute daily stand-up discussions to review what we did yesterday, who is on what task and scheduling expectations,” Arnusch says. “You put your best people on the hardest job, but within their skill set. It’s tricky. When we do it right, it works flawlessly.”
Arnusch says earlier in his farming career, he lacked an understanding of how important culture is to a business.
“As we developed our approach to vertical integration, we willed things to work,” he says. “It was a management breakthrough for me to understand the culture piece. It was a bigger educational undertaking than anything agronomic.”
Arnusch Farms uses a tool called Culture Index for all team members and vendors.
“The tool we use, along with the help of AI, determines who a person is as an individual and compares this to the job description they have,” he says. “At no fault of their own, we had set up people to fail. It wasn’t because they weren’t working hard or doing the job, but it was stretching them beyond what they do best.”
He shares a recent example from this fall of hiring a farm foreman who has a near perfect match as an individual and to the job description.
Role Model and Community Leader
Arnusch Farms’ legacy is now being rewritten on the first land the family had farmed.
“I bought my grandfather’s farm in 2018, and that farm started everything, but it’s right on I-76, so I knew it had development potential,” Arnusch says. “But I thought it would be in 25 years – not five.”
“I knew it had development potential. But I thought it would be in 25 years — not five.”
Currently, Arnusch is working to develop 262 acres to provide a mixed-use of residential, commercial, retail hospitality, community, civic and healthcare uses.
“We have an opportunity and an obligation to do this different and build amenities and services at the hallmark of our development. An important aspect our community needs is assisted living and aging-in-place residences,” he says. “If everything is successful, we’ll break ground in 2026.”
His vision includes keeping the farm house and an adaptive reuse agriculture education space, along with a small restaurant and possibly a distillery.
“I understand change is hard for many people. Our plan has gone to the town council three times and earned unanimous approval each time. This plan puts people first, and when you do that, you begin to take the edge off of change,” he says.
Arnusch is the current president of the Keenesburg Chamber of Commerce, and he proudly says when he first joined the organization it had 38 members. Since then, it has swelled to 90. The family also recently bought a building on Main Street to keep the local NAPA and hardware store tenant in place.
“I am a farmer who is choosing to plant seeds in a lot of different fields: my own farm, in the community and seeds in young people.”
Seeds Planted for the Future
“I am a farmer who is choosing to plant seeds in a lot of different fields: my own farm, in the community and seeds in young people,” Arnusch says.
As harvest wraps up, Arnusch says his farm’s next task will be to bring together his farm with his son’s, Brett. Whereas they have been operating two separate businesses and then partnering on machinery and labor, such as at harvest. Arnusch says the biggest launchpad for opportunity he was given was when his own father, Hans, stepped away from the farm.
Going forward, Brett will take over day-to-day operation, and Marc will transition to a role as president.
“This is what it will take for us to move the ball forward. I’ll manage trucks, markets and try to move some of our specialty business, such as food grade corn, forward,” Arnusch says. “It’s time for the youth on our team to put their imprint on the farming operation. I never thought of it as just mine.”
His mentoring extends beyond the fields of his farm, with past youth basketball players who now farm and his niece, TaylorAnn, and her husband, Casey.
“My next metric on how I’ll measure success is how I’m doing teaching and encouraging tomorrow’s producers and visionaries today,” he says.
