Pride
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Agriculture
A different classroom Darnall Feedlot hosts IRM program page 6
A S TA R - H E R A L D P U B L I C AT I O N
W W W. S TA R H E R A L D . C O M
Hi-tech farming
Corn fed
Growing the future
Hands-on learning
Agriculture made more efficient with apps
Cornbread keeps couple connected to the community
FARM helping plant the seeds of tomorrow
Students learn skills of tomorrow in classroom today
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Photo by Maunette Loeks
Dr. John Post and Dr. Paul Post don’t collect fancy sports cars like maybe some doctors, but have an infinity for John Deere tractors. The two men collect tractors from the “30 series” of John Deere tractors because they were the last series of two-cylinder tractors. They have driven the tractors in the annual Oregon Trail Tractor Drive at the Farm And Ranch Museum. The John Deere tractors are “just for pretty,” the two men admitted.
Photos by Sandra Hansen
Sugar growers celebrate decade of progress By SANDRA HANSEN
Doctors use careers to support ag interests By MAUNETTE LOEKS
Ag Editor
The area sugar beet industry was in peril in 2000. Tate & Lyle North America Sugars, owner of the Western Sugar Company, which had operated in the region since 1910, wanted to get out of the sugar beet processing business, but had little interest from potential buyers. This spurred area sugar beet growers to take action when the British-owned corporation approached them about buying the company. Several producer representatives met to discuss possibilities for retaining the industry that had meant so much to families and businesses in northeastern Colorado, western Nebraska, eastern Wyoming, and southeastern Montana for more than a century “Tate & Lyle approached the growers to see if we were interested,” recalled Kevin Hall, Bridgeport area farmer and chairman of the Western Sugar Cooperative board of directors. “It was either the growers buy it, or there was a real possibility that there wouldn’t be a beet industry in the four-state region.” This had come close to happening in the 1980s when farmers failed in their attempt to purchase Western Sugar from owners, the Hunt brothers. In 2000, presidents of the various sugar beet grower associations gathered in Fort Morgan, Colo., to organize an interest-seeking effort. The group was led by Rick Dorn, a former president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association who had a good reputation in the industry and served as the co-op’s board president for the first year. In the beginning, the new entity was called Rocky Mountain Sugar Growers Cooperative. A letter was sent to growers asking for a $2 per acre pledge if they were interested in participating in the purchase. The money would be used to
Staff Reporter
move the project forward. Assets to be included in the purchase were factories at Greeley and Fort Morgan, Colo., Bayard and Scottsbluff, Neb., Lovell, Wyo., and Billings, Mont. There would also be storage facilities at Sterling, Longmont and Rocky Ford, Colo., and Mitchell, Neb. Hall said it took a lot of meetings and traveling, but an agreement was finally reached, and on April, 1, 2002, Western Sugar Cooperative became the official owner of the region’s sugar beet industry. The $185 million sale, which included property, equipment, grower receivables from 2000 crop, and working capital, was finalized April 30. Shares in the co-op were $185. The new name was selected in part to retain name recognition among customers. The new name was selected in part to retain name recognition with customers. In September 2002, the former Holly Sugar factory at Torrington, Wyo., was added to the co-op’s holdings when it was acquired from American Crystal. Then the decision had to be made re-
garding which plant to keep in operation — Torrington or Bayard. “Bayard would have made more sense, because of its location,” Hall said, gazing out his home office window with almost visible pictures of those early days before his eyes. “But the decision was made to keep Torrington because of its larger capacity.” Management and employees for the most part remained the same as had worked for Tate & Lyle. But as the new operation settled in, a few changes were made, and in 2003, Inder Mathur was hired as the new CEO. He then selected the team he wanted to work with. Mathur had previously worked for Tate & Lyle, but the British company wanted to keep him during the early days of the change, so the cooperative took a different route. In the meantime, Mathur had gone to work for Chiquita, and that was where the cooperative eventually approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. “He brought a lot of knowledge and experience,” Hall said of Mathur. See WSC, page 4
As Dr. Paul Post and his brother, Dr. John Post, sat down on a recent Saturday, Paul joked, “You are party to a real miracle, getting us together on a Saturday.” That’s because Paul, of Mitchell, and his brother, John, have inherited a family condition — the two men hardly seem to have any downtime as they juggle two full-time careers. Paul and John are both doctors at local hospitals and also take on the full-time duties of running their own farms. The two men have a lot in common — they are twins, after all — especially a penchant for story telling. They can talk at length about their family history, detailing their grandfather George Allen Post’s youth as a drifter and horse thief who entered into the Army to avoid prosecution. And his father, George Henry, had a “nefarious” background, dying in prison, they told a surprised listener. They have also inherited another family condition —“We’ve got farming in our blood,” Paul said. The Post family story — of ranching and medicine — starts with their late father, Dr. George “Pete” Post, who recently passed away on Feb. 13. He came to Morrill County from Lewellen in 1950, starting his own ranch with three or four milk cows. He and his wife, Emarie, had six kids — four of them boys “because he needed ranch hands,” the men joke, saying the ranch grew to 450 head. “He felt with four wild boys, he better have something for them to do,” Paul said. A family history of being involved in medicine also traces its way back generations, John says. After his grandfather, the Army-reformed drifter and horse thief, married his wife, Ruth M. (Mardis) Post, she was bound and determined that her son, Pete, would be a doctor. Pete Post attended Nebraska Wesleyan — another Post family tradition — for two years See POST, page 2
Meeting customer needs is a priority for potato equipment manufacturers By RHONDA SCHULTE For the Star Herald
TORRINGTON, Wyo. — Larr y and DeeDee Anderson, owners of US Small Farm Equipment Co., are preparing for another deliver y to the eastern United States. This trip means they’ve made sales, keeping their small business afloat. It also means they will meet new people and make new friends. The Andersons started manufacturing specialized potato equipment as AFIVEPLUS, Inc., in 1998 at a farm place a few miles off the Huntley highway south of Torrington, Wyo. Larr y designs and his wife takes care of sales and covers office duties. Eric, one of their three children, does fabrication. Larr y graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1968 with a mechanical engineering degree. He’s done a little farming, and worked at various other jobs since then. For 11 years he worked as a research engineer for a Gering outboard engine marine company. In 1989, he began designing potato planters
Photo by Rhonda Schulte
Larry and DeeDee Anderson work on a standard two-row planter that uses two one-row planting unit assemblies. It can be used to plant either whole seed or cut seed.
for Lockwood, an irrigation pivot and potato equipment manufacturer in Gering. During his eight years there, he designed the first vacuum potato planter. He then began designing custom equipment and developed a potato planter for another major potato equipment manufacturer. As a boy growing up in Tor-
rington, Larr y attended church regularly but without true Christian belief. “Then, when I was 15, God got my attention through a Sunday school teacher,” Larr y states on the US Small Farm website. “Finally, I gave in to God’s promptings and tr usted Christ as my Lord and Savior
as stated in John 3:16. “Outwardly little changed, but inwardly I no longer had the fear of the distant future. I also had different perspective and motivation.” While in junior and senior high school Larr y had worked for a local “truck farmer,” but aside from that experience, he knew little about farm equipment, nor did he think he would ever be involved in the potato equipment business. “I am convinced as I look back that God was guiding me down this path, preparing me years ago for this work through my work and living experiences,” states Larr y’s narrative. His time with Lockwood laid the foundation for Anderson to start up and manage a manufacturing operation. “I learned a lot about ever y facet of the business,” he said. Larr y eventually bought Lockwood’s one- and two-row planters, came up with a new configuration and started making them from scratch. When they began, the Andersons had two contracts, one from Califor-
nia and one from Idaho. In late 2006, they changed their business name to US Small Farm Equipment Company. Eric, an Eastern Wyoming College welding program graduate, buys the steel, builds the prototype planters and assembles all diggers in his 5,000-square-foot building at Worland, Wyo., where he lives with his family. He cuts metal sheets using a CNC Plasma cutter, bends them, welds and drills holes. Periodically he hauls the equipment to the Anderson farm, where painting, final assembly, packaging and shipping take place. Additions to the standard product line of planters and diggers have resulted from customer requests. They include a sweet potato option, a picking table extension and a sacking platform. Smaller products developed over the years include a small table model seed cutter and hilling discs. The demand from small acre farmers to mechanize has resulted in many other custom orders, See ANDERSON, page 3