Meet the Farmers

Down in the heart of Missouri’s bootheel region, the small town of Braggadocio is the home of McKaskle Family Farm.  Steve and Kaye McKaskle have been cultivating this land since 1973, though the farm itself has been in Kaye’s family for nearly two centuries.  The McKaskle family’s legacy spans seven generations, with Steve and Kaye’s grandchildren now helping to manage nearly 5,000 acres and a state-of-the-art rice mill.

After facing challenges with conventional farming, Steve transitioned to organic farming in the early 1990s.  Over the years, the farm has supplied organic crops to renowned brands like Esprit, Patagonia, Whole Foods, and Chipotle.  In 2010, they began selling their own organic rice and popcorn products under the Braggadocio brand.

Recently, the McKaskles have had to abandon growing certified-organic crops on their farm due to the drifting of dicamba, a chemical herbicide prone to volatilization, onto their fields from neighboring conventional farms.  The McKaskles have been able to source the same great organic rice and popcorn varieties from other farms in the region to continue to provide their certified-organic, non-GMO Braggadocio products, but Steve is still determined to do more than just conventional farming on the McKaskle farm.  McKaskle Family Farm now focuses on climate-friendly farming methods that reduce greenhouse gasses and conserve water.  Steve encapsulates climate-friendly practices using the S.W.A.P. acronym:  Soil health, Water conservation, Air quality and carbon capture, and Price equity and stability.  No/Low tillage, growing row-rice with drip irrigation instead of flooding fields, re-using rice straw, and a cutting-edge tailwater conversion pump are just a few of the climate-friendly practices McKaskle Family Farm has been implementing.  Their rice is certified Climate-Friendly by AgriCapture.

You can find the McKaskles’ organic, non-GMO Braggadocio popcorn and rice products at your local grocery store or through the Mckaskle Family Farm website.