This North Dakota Farmer Helped Bring Rural Flavor to the Nation’s Capital

In this episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer, farmer and longtime North Dakota Farmers Union president Mark Watne reflects on his 12-term leadership, the creation of the farmer-owned Founding Farmers restaurant in Washington, DC, and his work with Grand Farm to advance ag technology. He discusses the importance of leadership transition, connecting consumers with agriculture, and helping farmers test and adopt innovations that make sense for their operations.

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Meet Mark Watne

Mark Watne, a North Dakota farmer and longtime president of the North Dakota Farmers Union (NDFU). Watne discusses his decision to step down after 12 terms leading the grassroots organization, which has grown significantly under his leadership—from roughly 40,000 to 70,000 members. He reflects on the importance of developing new leaders, the evolving role of farm organizations, and the challenges and opportunities ahead for agriculture.

One of Watne’s most notable accomplishments is his role in launching the Founding Farmers restaurant franchise in Washington, DC. Developed as a way to add value to agriculture and connect directly with consumers, the restaurants are owned by farmers and modeled after the idea of a family farm—offering scratch-made food sourced from U.S. farms and creating a welcoming experience that honors rural values. Founding Farmers has become a popular dining destination in the nation’s capital.

Watne also shares his insights on the future of farm technology and his involvement with Grand Farm, a North Dakota-based initiative focused on testing and validating ag technologies before widespread use. On his own farm, he’s implemented tools like autosteer, drone scouting, and variable rate applications, but he notes that economic limitations still influence many farmers’ ability to adopt new innovations. Grand Farm aims to close that gap by allowing producers to evaluate tech solutions in a real-world environment—helping ensure that investments deliver true value on the farm.

Episode Highlights

• Mark Watne is a North Dakota farmer and 12-term president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, stepping down after this term to make way for new leadership.
• He played a key role in launching the Founding Farmers restaurant franchise in Washington, DC, a farmer-owned initiative to bring high-quality, farm-grown food directly to consumers.
• The idea for the restaurant stemmed from the need to add value to agriculture and connect farmers more directly with consumers.
• Founding Farmers restaurants reflect a family farm model, offering scratch-made meals and emphasizing transparency in sourcing.
• Watne has been a champion for value-added agriculture, helping grow Farmers Union membership from around 40,000 to 70,000.
• He believes strongly in leadership succession and is stepping aside to allow a new generation to guide the NDFU.
• He’s vice chair of the Board of the Grand Farm project in North Dakota, which tests new ag technologies before they’re widely adopted.
• On his own farm, Watne has adopted technology like autosteer, soil-based variable rate application, drones, and advanced mapping.

Links and Resources

Transcript

Please note: This transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 Minutes With a Farmer podcast from Successful Farming. I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guest today is Mark Watne, a North Dakota farmer and 12-time president of the North Dakota Farmers Union. He joined me for a discussion about technology on the farm, his decision not to seek a 13th term, and the Washington, DC, restaurant franchise started by the North Dakota Farmers Union. 

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise and life lessons.

Mark, thank you so much for joining me on 15 Minutes With a Farmer.

Mark Watne: You’re welcome. I appreciate the opportunity.

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, I am just back from a trip to Washington DC where I was at a meeting of the North American Agricultural Journalists and the group of us had dinner at Founding Farmers, Fishers and Bakers down by the river. And I know that you have had a big hand in those Founding Farmers restaurants. And so before we get into your backstory, your history, why don’t you tell us a little bit about those restaurants?

Mark Watne: Well, it was actually quite a few years ago now, back in 2004 and 2005, and opened the first one in 2006. We had been trying to figure out how to add value to agriculture for the farmer. And of course, we tried lots of things, and we kept ending up with another commodity, and thought, you know, maybe we need to explore a little bit more in depth where we go right to the consumer. Spent maybe a year or 18 months almost looking at it.

And the group of farmers said, you know, we need to start something. We need to get this rolling. And that’s where the idea of the restaurant came from. And we decided to make it act like a family farm where you literally have people coming for, you know, talking about the farm, getting fed when they get there, getting food sent home with them. And we built upon that concept of US family farm food to a restaurant owned by farmers and making sure people get good quantity, high quality, made-from-scratch food and have opportunities to take some of that with them home. And it’s really where it developed from and we built from there.

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, we had a wonderful time. The food was fantastic. It was just a great experience. And of course, as ag journalists, we really enjoyed being in a restaurant that supports farmers and that has that sort of farm-grown, those offerings. So congrats on that. It was a wonderful night.

Mark Watne: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Lisa Foust Prater: So this came about as part of your involvement with the North Dakota Farmers Union. So you’ve been president, you’re in your 12th term, and I just saw an announcement last week that you decided you are not going to run for reelection for a 13th term. So tell me about your involvement with the Farmers Union and how that experience has been for you and what made you decide to step back after this term.

Mark Watne: I’ve actually got about 30 plus years in a farmers union. The last 12 I’ve been serving as president. I do still have a part of a farm up in north-central North Dakota and I’ve been able to let my or have my brother take care of that portion for me along with this family. So it’s enabled me to do a lot of the travel and work. So my decision was really based upon that we’ve really accomplished a lot. We’ve had a substantial growth as a membership. We’ve had the value-added product projects. We’ve grown all our companies that not only provide help for farmers, but help for funding the farm organization. Our memberships went from somewhere in the 40,000s up to 70,000. And I’m a firm believer that in an organization that’s as grassroots as ours, you have to develop leaders. And when those leaders are ready, you make that transition. And I think the timing’s right.

We have some really good people that’ll run. I’m not one to wait till things start to deteriorate or my energy goes down. So I’m going to serve out my time till December. And then we’re going to see some new thoughts, new avenues, and a new generation of people lead this organization.

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, that is such a good attitude to have. It makes me think about how so often on family farms and ranches, the same sort of struggle occurs where the person in charge, usually the dad, the grandpa, that they’re sticking around and in many cases not passing over any sort of torch to the next generation until very late in the game. It’s refreshing to see your willingness to be there and witness a new generation take the lead. And I’m sure they will appreciate your mentorship and experience as well.

Mark Watne: I think that’s very true and again you kind of start to see the work you put in along with the work of other members. We really are grassroots so it takes a lot in our organization and we just had ongoing leadership programs and agriculture is changing. I’ve been really part of some of the AI and some of the new technology and really went after being part of that so I could understand it.

But this is going to change dramatically in the next five and ten years and what’s going to be the traditional farm and the amount of technology and the ability to adapt to that is going to really need those folks that understand where this is going, what they may want from it, and how they’re going to put it together so their operations can fit within the new mold. So I think that another reason is to really get the folks that have to make a living doing this to be able to be part of the operation. And I think that’s really driving me to do this.

I have other plans that I want to take care of in my life. And my wife and I were always really good at writing goals, and we’ve achieved a number of them. And now on to the next stages of our life.

Lisa Foust Prater: You mentioned, you know, technology on the farm and it’s so interesting to me to think about, how much farming has changed in just a really, couple of generations.

Mark Watne: We actually have the two statements of the homestead of the quarters of land my great grandfather and great-great grandmother homesteaded and we still farm those. My dad, when he took over, he had made some of the logical changes that were a little more horsepower, a little bigger equipment, and doing a lot more repairs and that stuff. But we made a major switch to minimum tillage, not full no-tillage.

And I can remember my dad’s great concerns. And it was really enlightening to me after about four or five years, he really suggested coming through those ‘80s and starting that new process that we were able to keep farming because of those adjustments we made. So I think that’s really a strong statement from your father to say, we needed to do that even though it was a change. And now we’re part of the Grand Farm in North Dakota. There’s other areas that are doing this work.

My goal there is to get the farmers in the room so that we can do a fair amount of testing on this technology that the farmers can research before they have to spend the dollars on the investment. That’s really trying to figure out the return on investment and what really does work for the farm. There can be a lot of money spent on things that don’t really add value. And with all this stuff coming and as quick as it’s coming, we need that test place along with our university system to help us get through and really develop the things that will make sense.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many new things all the time. Yeah, if you just threw your money at every new thing out there, it would be very difficult to make a profit. But yeah, somebody’s got to test those technologies and share their experience.

Mark Watne: Yeah, no, that’s so true. And again, that’s what I hope comes of it. And I was fortunate to meet with one of the entrepreneurs, Howard Dahl in Fargo, who was kind of an early starter in the development of the Concorde Air Drill, which was one of the early stages of going to this minimum type till air system. And there’s just an endless amount of development from that. In fact, there’s many manufacturers that have developed products similar to those that have improved upon that initial design. So it was something we started early and a lot of people followed not only our lead but others that had their lead and then course having entrepreneurs developing more products to surround that was really important.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. You know, farmers are just the ultimate entrepreneurs and inventors.

Mark Watne: Yeah, no, that’s definitely true. it’s probably the thing I missed the most when I was becoming more of the office type person and the travel person for the job. We had a shop and we did just about all our own repairs, all the way to repairing transmissions and fuel injections and fuel injectors we could test. And we were a shop that did a lot of work for neighbors simply because we were the early adopters of concepts. 

Lisa Foust Prater: So you mentioned earlier some of the uses on the farm of the technology. I’m wondering what you have done on your own farm.

Mark Watne: We’ve walked our way through all the steering systems and all the auto steer. We’ve added that. We’ve added some rate changing applications based on soil types. 

We’re mapping like crazy. I’m a little uncomfortable we’re not using the maps as much as we have data, but we’re getting there. We have the capacity, measuring and all the work for crop insurance and for FSA, some of that work we can do. So we’ve been pretty consistently adopting. We do use machines that obviously fly through the air, the drones and so forth, that we use them chase blackbirds and to do some spotting.

So we’re not quite as aggressive as some, but we’ve got quite a bit of technology on our farms. And obviously with our harvesting equipment, we’re measuring a lot to see where production is as we would expect and where we’re seeing some weaknesses in the field. So it’s just really some good tools that we can use.

Lisa Foust Prater: Those mapping tools are so fascinating, I think. But like you said, sometimes there’s a, I don’t want to say a disconnect, but an overload of data. And the question arises of what to do. What do you do with all this data? How do you sift through it? How do you know what’s important? What’s maybe a little bit less important? How do you make changes based on it? So there’s definitely something there that I know that a lot of producers are dealing with.

But that mapping technology is just, it’s amazing how you can see the differences within a field of what you need. And it’s so helpful for, you know, reducing those inputs, which are of course just so expensive.

Mark Watne: Yeah, that’s exactly true. And I’ve always said that when you get to the rooms, like I’ve traveled into the World Farm Organization meetings, we have conversations about, well, can we feed the world? What’s the capacity? And I don’t think people really understand what we could do if we had a little better prices and a little bit more to invest. Because a lot of times, the decisions we make is it doesn’t do a lot of good to add four or five bushels to acre, the expense to do it is equal to the cost of adding the inputs and whatever. There’s times when you make decisions on a fertilizer application or a chemical application to protect the crop that are just the fundamental economic thing, not about just simply increasing yield. So I’m confident that most farms out here know and have the ability to increase their production, you know, 10 or 20 percent. It just isn’t cost effective to do it. So I think we really can produce a lot more food if we need to. The question will become is the market going to reward us for doing that.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. Well, I am so happy to get to talk to you today. Like I said, we had the best time at the restaurant in DC and I love what you guys are doing there with that. And congratulations on your terms with, you know, serving as president of the North Dakota Farmers Union. You’ve done incredible work there. I know that, you know, just from reading comments and after the announcement that so many farmers commented how much they appreciated your hard work and representing them. So, congratulations on such a successful run there and I just hope you have the best retirement.

Mark Watne: Thank you for that. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Open the latest issue of Successful Farming and visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm. Join me next week for another episode of 15 Minutes with a Farmer.