The crew of the recently relocated Farmers Cooperative, now lying along Iowa Highway 144 about four miles north of Perry at the intersection of Clover Avenue, hosted an open house Wednesday for FC members and interested visitors to tour their new Boone County operations.
FC has moved most of its operations from their longtime location on Perry’s west side, at the corner of 130th Street and I Avenue—just north of Tyson Fresh Meats and east of the Brownfields project—to a 40-acre tract on Clover Avenue, also known as the Berkley Road or County Road P54.
The relocation allows FC to expand its operations, which include storing liquid and granular nitrogen fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia and grain.
“It was time to reinvest in the Perry facility,” Laura Underwood said Wednesday morning as she laid tablecloths for the open house. Underwood is the FC communications director. “We needed to expand to better serve our customers,” she said.
With more than $1 billion in annual sales, the Farmers Cooperative Co. is based in Farnhamville, Iowa, and serves a 3-million-acre trade territory, employing 450 full-time workers in 50 locations, Underwood said.
Des Moines-based Weitz Construction was the general contractor for the year-long project, which started in the fall of 2013. According to records of the Boone County Assessor’s office, the property is worth $4.5 million.
The property’s phase two environmental site assessment is expected to be completed this summer.
Mark Miner, FC’s chief financial officer, said the new facility offers “everything we did at the Perry plant plus some additional storage.”
Brandon Spencer, operations superintendent, said some operations continued this spring at the old Perry facility.
“We’re still in Perry,” he said, “making sure our growers are healthy, happy and productive.”
He said the move northward should be complete by the end of the year, with all the FC products and services centrally located at the new Clover Avenue plant.
On the agronomy side, the Perry FC sells three brands of soybeans: Stine, Asgrow and their own FC brand. They sell DeKalb and Hoegemeyer Hybrid seed corn along with some Stine seed. The seed shop, with its seed treater, was largely vacant Wednesday, “but we had a very busy spring,” Spencer said.
Managers of the former Perry plant first moved its offices and scales to the new site, along with its granular nitrogen fertilizer and anhydrous ammonia. Then came the company’s shop, seed storage and liquid nitrogen fertilizer relocated.
Upwards of 100 people attended Wednesday’s open house. Among the visitors was Lawrence Bice of rural Perry, who said he has been an FC member since he started farming in 1956.
“Farming’s changed a lot just in my lifetime,” Bice said, and the new FC facility reflects those changes.
“This is such a tech-driven business now,” said FC Precision Agriculture Director Kent Klingbeil. “We have three sprayers that are all GPS controlled. Our applicators all carry tablets. With this new facility and our range of services, we are set to give our growers the best way to take advantage of the latest products and methods.”
The question of what will happen to FC’s vacated property on Perry’s western edge remains undecided. FC officials last year told the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission the company plans to demolish the buildings on the old site but had not yet decided what to do with the land under them.
Officials with the city of Perry have indicated to FC a willingness to apply for an Environmental Protection Agency assessment grant to conduct the Phase I and II testing for the property, an offer that could save FC the cost of the required tests.
Perry would seek the EPA grant funding for the sake of public health and with an interest in bringing the former FC grounds into line with other plans for the brownfield area on Perry’s western limits along the North Raccoon River. But the arrangement would probably only work if FC gave the land to Perry outright, a city spokesperson said.
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