Feb. 28, 2022

It was an offer that felt a bit like a gut punch.

Would Damon Brown’s family farm be willing to sell land so semi-trucks filled with dead hogs could be buried?

“My family didn’t want to have basically a graveyard on their cropland, so they turned it down,” said Brown, who grew up in rural Minnesota.

It was during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when farmers “were literally having to kill off the livestock they raised because there wasn’t enough processing,” said Kristine Reiner, who is from Canistota and met Brown when they were students at the University of Sioux Falls.

“We saw all the struggles.”

And the two decided to use their marketing and technology skills to create a better way for the ag community to connect and communicate.

It led to Cash Cow Co-op, which they co-founded in April 2020 as an online directory for producers and related businesses that includes features on their operations.

“The ag community isn’t as connected as it could be. There are things that prevent people from communicating, whether it’s not wanting to ask for help – that’s the farmer mentality – or some barriers put in place by existing structures,” Brown said. “It really is a struggle, and I think if we worked together more, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

They’ve since evolved their model to include education sessions around marketing and sustainability, and they’re working on a website template for producers. They also offer to produce videos highlighting the farms.

When they’re not working on their startup, Reiner runs her own art business, teaches art part time in Canistota and works remotely for a tech company in Baltimore. Brown runs The Movement, a nonprofit in Sioux Falls focused on civil and social advocacy, education and outreach, and does part-time voice work and copywriting.

With Cash Cow Co-op, “we are hoping to be a nationally scaled startup in five to 10 years,” Reiner said. “We want to essentially make it more of a software, an integrated platform that’s more user-friendly.”

Their concept caught the eye of reality TV personality Weston Bergmann, a contestant on MTV’s “The Real World: Austin” and “The Challenge” who also founded a business incubator in Kansas City.

Bergmann launched a 17-episode reality competition show that blends elements of “The Real World” – entrepreneurs live together – with “Shark Tank” – as they compete and pitch their ideas.

From more than 5,000 applicants, 20 were selected for “The Blox” – including Reiner and Brown.

“I think that speaks to where it was located, Kansas City, and we’re an ag tech startup, so I could see how they saw the importance behind what we were doing,” Reiner said. “It was a week full of nonstop information. We were writing everything down.”

They were judged daily by experts in various business fields and split into groups as they competed.

“It was such an experience. We learned so much,” Brown said. “The whole goal was for us to take the information presented in a morning session and absorb it into our business, so it was really powerful.”

While they didn’t win any investor money and they’re not sure if the docuseries will get picked up for a future season, the connections were invaluable, they said.

“I’m actually working with a tech company that was there, and they’re leading tech innovators on the East Coast,” Reiner said. “So just to learn from them and have a mentor like that is really going to help us excel.”

To watch “The Blox,” download the app on Google Play here or the App Store here.