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MANAGER’S DESK
Jerald KemmererCEO/GM Pride Ag Resources We are in the middle of a decent fall harvest. I know you have a lot of activities going on at your farms with planting and harvesting corn, milo, and soybeans all while attempting to find something dry enough to cut. Yields from what we are seeing are all over the place, but the luck of timing seems to be the determining factor of better yields. The earlier planted crops seem to be resulting better yields – or it could be the luck of timing of the showers we received earlier this summer that may have also impacted them. Either way, we need more moisture to improve the planted wheat although it seems
Fourth Quarter 2023
to have a better start to it from what we have seen the last few years. I would also like to announce that we have wrapped up the Elkhart Coop acquisition. We made the announcement late summer that we were in negotiations with their board and financial institution. We took control of their assets at the end of September. I would like to welcome the additional employees to the team and also welcome the new producer members that have joined, or will be joining, Pride Ag Resources in the future. The acquisition of this cooperative is a little different than what your cooperative has done in the past. At the end of the day, it is still one cooperative of farmers helping out other cooperative producers with the same coop needs while growing your cooperative. Pride Ag Resources hasn’t obtained an acquisition in a while, but it’s just the same as our past acquisitions
which included Beeler Cooperative, Grain Growers, Ford-Kingsdown Cooperative, Ensign-Haggard Cooperative, and Hanston Cooperative. The acquisition of Elkhart Coop wasn’t the best timing regarding fall harvest but the team of employees has been scrambling to get facilities ready in just a short period of time. Like my parents taught me, anything that is worth having, can require hard work. I want to personally thank the entire team of employees, board of directors, and CoBank staff for all their efforts in making the acquisition come together. We even had new producer members from that area providing their personal time and equipment to help us get facilities ready. As a cooperative member, I don’t think there is a better feeling than one cooperative helping out another cooperative so that they have the resources for their producers to be successful and
Inside This Issue 2 Safety 3 Ace Hardware - Grain 4 Agronomy 5 Agronomy 6 Feed 7 AV Energy