-Submitted photo
Rob Jacobs, CEO of Cooperative Farmers Elevator, stands near the company sign at the main office in Ocheyedan.

ROCK VALLEY — Farming may have looked much different in 1899, when a group of producers met to form the Farmers Mutual Cooperative Association of Rock Valley.

But throughout all the changes in farming over 125 years, a few cooperative acquisitions and a few name changes, Cooperative Farmer’s Elevator (CFE) remains a vital part of many communities today in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota.

The company’s headquarters is located in Rock Valley in Sioux County.

CFE had planned to commemorate its 125th anniversary with a celebration for all members and employees and their families on June 29, but the event was canceled “due to the devastating floods in our communities,” according to the company’s website.

Humble beginnings

Company General Manager Rob Jacobs said other names under which the company has operated since the very early years included (among others) Farmer’s Cooperative Company of George, Farmer’s Elevator Cooperative, United Farmer’s Cooperative, Farmer’s Cooperative Society of Ashton, Farmer’s Co-op Company, and Cooperative Elevator Association.

“Every little town we’re in today would have had a cooperative in the early 1900s,” said Jacobs. “When co-ops were first formed, it’s really the same basis as the way they operate under today — a group of farmers came together to provide a supply of goods and services that they couldn’t do individually — to buy them at a better price (as a group), then also to have markets for their grain or whatever they were selling, at a better price as well.”

Jacobs said the company’s early years would have featured coal as one of their larger products because people burned coal for heating, brought in by rail. He said all feed would have been bagged in those early years, with the first bulk feed trucks coming into play in the 1950s. Fertilizer would have also been handled in bags early on, he said, via carts that the farmers pulled themselves.

“The first application machines didn’t get adapted until the 1960s or 1970s,” said Jacobs.

He said the first elevators were all constructed of wood, with no cement. The first cement elevators the company put up were in the early 1950s, and Jacobs said the earliest one they had was put up in Ocheyedan in 1953-1954.

Lumber yards used to be part of most elevators, but Jacobs said they are disappearing.

“We have four lumber yards left — it’s kind of an oddity,” he said.

Changes in farming techniques have ripple effects, Jacobs said, as they have needed to change along with them. Grain handling and the speed at which it’s handled is at the top.

“It used to be if you had two 3,000-bushel-per-hour legs, it was big as a facility, and you may have only had one — maybe two to receive grain with. And about everything came to town by tractor and wagon — barge boxes or flare boxes — 125 to maybe 175 bushels at a time, and now almost everything comes in 1,000 bushels or maybe more at a time with semis, or 750-bushel wagons.”

Jacobs said the last bins they built in Ocheyedan held 1.3 million bushels, while the cement elevator they just tore down held just over 300,000 bushels. Overall, that elevator had the capacity to hold up to 600,000 bushels.

“So now you have one bin that’s five times the size of the original elevator; it’s pretty incredible,” said Jacobs. “Now instead of dumping up to 4,000 bushels per hour, combined, we can take in excess of 45,000 to 60,000 bushels per hour in one location.”

He said tractors used to be lined up down main street waiting to dump in the fall, but today he said those lines need to keep moving or producers will go somewhere else.

Corn-drying speed affects their speed of business as well, he said, with the elevator company moving from 300-bushel-per-hour dryers to 10,000-bushel-per-hour dryers today.

CFE, along with other cooperatives, has gone from horses to drones in 125 years.

“Technology continues to change at an increasingly rapid speed every day. We know how important it is to adapt to it, including the use of field data,” he said, adding that the cost of adapting new technology goes up continuously.

“We have to grow to outpace the (adaptation of) technology,” said Jacobs. “If you don’t try to keep up, you’re left behind.”

He said their members use an app that helps them access and use their own personal field data, view grain contracts, market prices, and invoices to help them make better decisions on the farm.

Jacobs said CFE stepped into drone application services just this year, and the wet spring “amplified the need for drone application,” he said, adding that CFE has already scouted more than 40,000 acres, and sprayed more than 14,000 acres of soybean pre-emergence and pastures. He expects the company’s drones will be busy with fungicide application.

Precision ag practices have prompted elevators to help producers get every bushel they can, Jacobs said, which adds value to their services, and value to the farmers they serve. Some of those newer practices might include emerging carbon markets, and how to use artificial intelligence (AI) for customer integration, predictability within the business, data collection — along with what to do with that data, etc. It’s expensive to implement, but Jacobs sees it as not just an option, but a necessity as he helps CFE move forward.

“We want to be a conduit in which they can receive maximum value on their acres, and there will be a lot of change as we go along through these markets,” said Jacobs. “A few years ago, we would have never even thought about some of the technologies being used today.”

He said markets today can react to global situations in an instant, which was unheard of in the days of the Farmer’s Mutual Cooperative Association of Rock Valley in 1899.

“Information is readily available and it has an instant impact on the markets,” said Jacobs. “Knowing what’s going on around (the world) can create instant volatility in the markets. (Back) in the day, if the market moved a penny or two it was a big day; now it moves 15 to 40 cents/day or more, based off of a lot of factors like potential crop disasters or drought.”

Regional cooperatives can work together to help producers hit the markets and enhance value to the farmer, Jacobs said, such as AGP in Sheldon, which converts soybeans into soybean meal, and which can be fed locally or shipped to other end users; or soybean oil can be processed for human consumption, or made into biodiesel or renewable fuel.

As farming becomes more complicated, it can place a sizeable load on the mental health of producers. It was for that reason that the CFE board of directors voted to offer mental health assistance to their members, with CFE sharing in the cost of the first few sessions of mental health counseling for members as an outreach service.

They also put on their first “Women in Ag” conference last winter as an outreach to help farm women understand the business and be better able to work alongside in the business, whether on the farm or from the farm office.

“There is tremendous amount of pressure to farmers and other people in (ag) business. It can be financial, legal or otherwise. We just want to be part of the communities we’re in; that’s an important focus for us,” said Jacobs. “This cooperative is owned by the members, and we want to help them if they need it.”

The key to cooperative success, according to Jacobs, is a strong balance sheet, market access and good people. He said CFE has been blessed with all three.

Jacobs said agriculture continues to be a strong vocation and presence in local communities and in the world.

“Through world wars and droughts and floods, farmers and agriculture just keep going,” he said. “People don’t stop eating when those things are going on.”

He said for as much as cooperatives have changed with the times, there are some things that remain constant — even since 1899.

“The cool part about a cooperative is that the co-op story hasn’t changed,” said Jacobs.

“The same reason they were formed 125 years ago today remains. It’s a matter of farmers being able to buy products, goods and services better than they can as individuals, and to have markets for their grain, then trust that the check is good — and the cooperative is still governed by an elected board of directors.”