Agweek 25th Anniversary

VOLUME 25, NUMBER 52 / August 2, 2010

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We started by listening to farmers; we still are 25TH ANNIVERSARY

PAGE 2 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

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he inspiration that led to Agweek came from talking to farmers.

Although I grew up in northeastern Indiana, in a region surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans, my agricultural background was strictly as a consumer. My career in the newspaper business had been in large cities: Detroit, Philadelphia and Miami.

I came to Grand Forks in 1982. I knew and appreciated small towns and close-knit communities. I wanted to learn what made the Grand Forks region tick economically. That led me to agriculture.

I spent as much time as I could talking to individual farmers, county agents, implement dealers, bankers, leaders of farm organizations, academics and others. I was a newly minted publisher, so folks took time to educate me. I still appreciate it.

What struck me in conversation after conversation was the complexity of farming. It was not just in the production of crops. It was in the marketing of crops. It was in how government programs affected key decisions. It was in how global markets played critical roles.

I recall a farmer telling me in precise detail how the Mexican government’s regulations worked. Another described the difference between Europe’s farm program and ours. A third took me step by step through the thenexisting farm bill.

That’s when it hit me. Here are men and women whose operations are far from romantic notions of the simple farm life. They are running sizable businesses, which are affected by far more than the weather. They have to

know what is going on in Washington and around the world. They need market information.

When I looked at what the Grand Forks Herald was offering, I saw how short we fell. The “Farm and Home” section was largely features surround-

Agweek @25

An ag news source roots in the Upper Great Plains

■

Mike Maidenberg, who was publisher when Agweek started, stands at the entry of the Collins Center for Public Policy, a think tank that has a project dealing with the future of communities affected by the Everglades restoration.

ing classified advertising. Not good enough.

When I looked at the main farm magazines, I thought they were too heavily focused on production agriculture, on how to grow more. They came out monthly, so they could not respond

By Mikkel Pates

F

Agweek Staff Writer

ARGO, N.D. – Celebrate a milestone with us – 25 years of Agweek.

The magazine you are holding in your hands (or reading online) commemorates a quarter-century as a service to farmers and agribusinesses in the Northern Plains. For those with calculators, that’s 1,300 issues.

After its first 25 years, this publication strives for many of the same goals that are part of its heritage, to provide value and information to farmers and their communities in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana. We work to turn over some of the rocks that come with the farm, and hold up a mirror to reveal an unfolding history for those grappling with the issues of today.

Agweek remains a part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Grand Forks Herald newspaper but their parent company has changed from Knight Ridder Corp., then the third-largest newspaper chain in America, to Forum Communications Co. of Fargo, N.D., a regional power in journalism.

quickly to news.

Was there an opportunity to create a weekly magazine aimed at farmers’ information needs? There was Business Week. Why not Agriculture Week? Or more simply, Agweek.

The parent company of the Herald, Knight Ridder, showed interest. A “Business Monday” section had been successfully launched in Miami, as part of the Miami Herald. Company headquarters then were in Miami, and top executives took note. It made their decision to invest in a weekly ag magazine less of a hurdle.

Of course, there were growing pains.

As a free-standing publication aimed at the agricultural community, Agweek needed to develop its own readership base. Its distribution reached beyond the circulation area of the Grand Forks Herald, bringing new production and circulation costs. We had to build awareness among national advertisers that we existed.

Of prime importance then as now was the editorial content. Under the leadership of Jim Durkin, Agweek’s first editor, and Mike Jacobs, then editor of the Herald, we put together the news-oriented magazine that you have in your hands.

That Agweek is alive and well at age 25 is proof that the original inspiration was on target. If the magazine was born out of listening to farmers, it has thrived because it continues to do so.

So thanks, Dear Reader. In my note of Aug. 5, 1985, I wished you “many good and productive weeks of reading.” Now I wish you many good and productive years.

– Mike Maidenberg

So much has happened in agriculture, and in communications technology since then, but it’s important to remember how visionary individuals gave Agweek its start.

Mike Maidenberg was the first publisher of Agweek, along with the Grand Forks Herald, and AGWEEK: See Page 3

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Jim Durkin, an editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, was the

AGWEEK

Continued from Page 2

Jacobs was then editor of the award-winning daily newspaper. The Herald often was innovating with specialty publications.

Maidenberg came to the Grand Forks Herald as publisher in June 1982. Born in 1942, he’d grown up in Marion, Ind., in a town that was totally surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans. His father owned a restaurant equipment business, and his uncle was a longtime newspaperman.

“Ag was not part of my life,” he says, adding “I was strictly a consumer.”

He went to the University of Michigan for a history major and on to the Peace Corps in India from 1964 to 1966. The Green Revolution under University of Minnesota scientist Norman Borlaug was under way, but he wasn’t fully aware.

“I do remember that the expectation was that India would suffer as it had suffered from a series of famines, if the monsoons weren’t favorable, and if the population could not be

FIRST STAFF

■ Editor: Jim Durkin ■ Asst. editor: Reed

Karaim ■ Reporters: Ed Maixner, Randall Mikkelsen, Laura Sands and Juan Miguel Pedraza.

■ Copy editors: Andre Stephenson and Kevin Grinde ■ Clerks: Stephen J. Lee and Greg Harmel ■ Photographer: Ken Kleven ■ Washington correspondent: James McGregor kept under control,” Maidenberg says. “The idea that in a decade India would be able to feed itself was not something anybody dreamt of as being possible.”

After the Peace Corps, Maidenberg went back to school at Columbia School of Journalism. He went to the Detroit Free Press as a reporter/editor, to the Philadelphia Inquirer as an editor and to Knight Ridder’s Miami headquarters on the business side. Grand Forks

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AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 3

would be his first publisher role.

Coming to North Dakota was in some ways like coming into a small town similar to what he’d grown up in. As with Marion, he initially didn’t know what made Grand Forks’ economy tick.

“People would talk about the air base and about the University of North Dakota, but they’d also talk about how agriculture drives the whole state,” Maidenberg says. “I didn’t know much about it, but at least I knew that I didn’t know.”

Maidenberg remembers people being generous to educate a new publisher from the outside. He often found himself on farms or talking to county agricultural agents and implement dealers.

“After awhile, it really began to dawn on me – especially as someone with a hazy image of a farmer in bib overalls and not knowing much beyond that – that these were some very solid, sophisticated business people,” he says.

But some of these farmers told him they were frustrated by being somewhat isolated from information.

“There was no Internet at

the time,” he says. “It struck me that here is this audience of medium-, small- and some large-sized operations and they were hungry for news and information,” he says. “They wanted to know what was going on in the world and in Washington. Newspapers didn’t really address those subjects very well and the standard farm magazines were monthly or even every other month, and they were heavily oriented toward production – how to grow more.”

Maidenberg and Jacobs saw an opportunity and went looking for an agriculture and business editor for the paper.

Home-grown talent

They found Jim Durkin.

Durkin was a former Herald staffer who was working at the Greenville, S.C., newspaper.

He grew up in Inkster, N.D., The oldest son in a family with eight children, he’d helped his family raise a full range of crops, including potatoes and some sugar beets – “everything but livestock,” Durkin says.

At age 10, Durkin already was spending long hours on a

tractor but decided his aspirations were off the farm.

“By the time I was old enough to know better,” he jokes.

He’d been in sports in high school and started at Mayville State University, thinking he’d teach and coach. An instructor there suggested he take a course in journalism and write for the college paper.

“It was kind of fun and I thought I could stay close to sports, so I transferred to the University of North Dakota and became a journalist,” he says.

As a student, he approached Grand Forks Herald sports editor Virg Foss about working at the paper part time. Durkin started at the Herald full time in 1976. From late 1981 to 1983, he went to South Carolina, but was happy to come back to North Dakota when given the opportunity.

The Herald had a “green section” called “Farm and Home.”

It was largely an advertisingdriven publication.

“We were improving that,” Durkin recalls. “Basically, there was me and Gail Hand and Andre Stephenson, the layAGWEEK: See Page 16

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Agriculture continues to evolve

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Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Farmers in Agweek country have had some wild swings in profitability in the past 25 years, but government farm policies, including crop insurance, are still an important safety net.

Former North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer served as ag secretary for President George W. Bush in the final year of his last term.

Schafer was the highest-ranking North Dakotan in a recent presidential cabinet.

He handled crises, but was not in the position for long.

And Agweek has been there to chronicle those changes ■

By Mikkel Pates

Agweek Staff Writer

FARGO, N.D. – Agweek magazine executives chose to launch the publication in some of the most difficult times in agriculEVOLVE: See Page 5

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

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AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 5

Rep. Collin Peterson, DMinn., changed the Northern Plains impact on farm policy when he became chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. In concert with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., in the Senate Agriculture Committee, the region was well represented in the 2008 farm bill debate and likely will be in 2012.

Continued from Page 4

tural history. A look back reminds us how varied things were. But it seems challenges are nothing new and aren’t likely to end.

The first issues of Agweek were published in 1985, and farmers and agribusinesses in the Red River Valley were coming into some of the most difficult financial situations they’d faced since the 1930s. The region’s agriculture community had gone through the “go-go 1970s,” with government calls to plant “fencerow-to-fencerow,” and now were suffering with double-digit interest loan rates and then collapsing farm prices.

Many “young tiger” farmers of the previous decade were humbled and struggled through the darkness. Some who had kept more of their equity in reserve benefitted with the help of more sophisticated information. Agweek came into its powers as a powerful light, shining a spotlight on market factors and governmental support policies trying to stabilize the hemorrhaging ag economy and flush market-depressing government grain supplies out of the system.

Much of the region suffered another blow during the drought of 1988 to ’90 as the industry regained its footings. Agweek shifted its focus to a regional level in the 1990s and has EVOLVE: See Page 6

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

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prospered into the 2000s, at times achieving record profits.

Like the Dakotas themselves, Agweek has moved through a period of over-development and back to a lean and regional version that still strives to put useful information in the pickup and tractor cabs of the region’s farmers.

Here, then, is one journalist’s broad description of the region’s agriculture in the region in Agweek’s first 25 years – its policy and politics, its technology and its infrastructure. For those of you who have experienced it, you’ve seen a lot. All of it was in the pages of Agweek.

Agweek country was dominated by wheat and barley concerns in the 1980s.

Today, the region is an expanding edge of the corn and soybean belts, especially with the development of shorterseason hybrids and varieties.

Bart Schott of Kulm, N.D., soon will be president of the National Corn Growers.

Politics and policy

As Agweek took its new name in 1985, it was obvious that this publication (which Forum Communications later would own, as part of the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald) was becoming uniquely qualified to delve into some of agriculture’s greatest needs – market information.

Interest rates were into double-digits.

Land inflation in the 1970s was causing financial collapse for farmers. Government storage and loan programs kept too much grain in storage, hanging over a market. A Fargo, N.D., author wrote a book, “Unwanted Grain,” to

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

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Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Potato production shifted outside of the nonirrigated Red River Valley in the 1990s. Expanded irrigation allows Kidder County in North Dakota to grow potatoes, as well as expanded areas in the Park Rapids, Minn., area, the Oakes, N.D., area and the Williston area in northwest North Dakota.

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

The Northern Plains has been known for producing calves that are fed out for market elsewhere.

With the trend toward feed byproducts from ag processing plants, more producers are backroundfeeding animals and even finishing them. There is hope for a new, largerscale kill plant for the region, financed by South Korean

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tion.

In its early days, Agweek competed with The Forum, based in Fargo, N.D., and others for scoops on figures like Milt Hertz from Mott, N.D., and later Keith Bjerke of Northwood, N.D., who both would manage government pricesupport programs the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (the ASCS, later named the Farm Service Agency).

Sarah Vogel, a North Dakota lawyer, stopped federal farm foreclosures with her Coleman v. Block class-action lawsuit, which culminated in the Farm Credit Act of 1987. While daily news outlets (like The Forum, where I worked then) often focused on the pain – the “tractorcades,” the protests, the foreclosures, the state debt mediation, the write-offs – Agweek was more focused on the markets and policy matters. Agweek reporters were sent to cover the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade talks and the intrigue with the European Community (now the European Union). That’s what the survivors would need to know about as they looked to the future. It also made good business sense.

Policy maneuvering was happening

Congratulations AGWEEK on your 25th Anniversary

25TH ANNIVERSARY

on a dramatic scale.

Locally, reporters chased farmers who were redeeming their Payment-InKind certificates, to “redeem” grain out of storage, based on local county rates that were most favorable in remote places in North Dakota or Nebraska.

Sens. Mark Andrews, R-N.D., and Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., were big players in the Senate Agriculture Committee. Rep. Arlan Stangeland, R-Minn., was a champion for the region’s sugar cooperatives, who then were little more than a decade old. In Washington, Sonja Hillgren, a former United Press International ag writer covered the action in Washington for Agweek. Hillgren lent credibility to the magazine and went on to be editor of Farm Journal magazine.

She was followed by Randall Mikkelsen, who later became a White House correspondent for Reuters, among other things.

The late 1980s was a time of big transitions. Government abandoned the standard “setaside” programs that required farmers to idle a certain number of acres to receive farm program benefits. Other land idling programs would replace them.

At Agweek, provocateur Juan Miguel Pedraza gained fame for his reporting and opinions on trade and commodity issues. In Washington, North Dakota native Jerry Hagstrom took over in the early 1990s, covering the 1996 “freedom

to farm” bill, which attempted to “decouple” production from farm payments so farmers could compete in the world market with reduced trade barriers.

The Conservation Reserve Program, started in the 1985 farm bill, took millions of acres of North Dakota farmland out of production – with a railroad abandonment – speeding the demise of many small town businesses. The CRP started out as a plan to stop erosion (perhaps as a way to ease some farmers into retirement) but morphed into more of a wildlife habitat program.

On the state level, the 1990s were marked by a buildup of loan programs that would encourage the development of “new generation” cooperatives. To prosper, farmers launched numerous new efforts.

In farm bills in 2002 and 2008, the government support came back in other ways, including to the “permanent disaster” provisions that favor the Northern Plains.

Arguably the biggest thing to happen to the region for ag policy in recent years has been the ascendance of Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., to the chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., to the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee, with attending leverage in the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Other major figures for the region’s

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 7

agriculture: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., recently has held sway over some policies as chairman of the Finance Committee. Former Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was defeated after being a champion of corn-based ethanol. More recently, Agweek covered Ed Schafer, North Dakota’s former governor, who made a splash when he served a brief stint as U.S. agriculture secretary in the waning months of the George W. Bush presidency. Schafer proved to be a quick study, but he had little time in the office.

Looking ahead, Hagstrom has toiled to cover Peterson’s early efforts to complete hearings for the 2012 farm bill, which likely will shift government supports toward crop insurance and away from direct payments. Ironic for a Democrat, Peterson has suggested moving away from payment limitations that historically have been popular in Northern states where Farmers Union Democrats (including departing Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.) have long pushed for increased “targeting” of benefits to small- and medium-sized “family” farmers.

Production technology

Agweek always has watched for

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In the 1990s and 2000s, as farmers healed financially, they’ve often been willing to invest in processing that would give them some “valueadded” advantage.

The advent of air seeding technology in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, coupled with glyphosate herbicide, has changed farm practices to produce crops with considerably less tillage, reducing input costs and cutting soil erosion exposure.

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Farmer-owned value-added cooperatives formed ProGold L.L.C. in Wahpeton, N.D., but the wet mill had to be leased out to Cargill to make a go of it. Most “new generation” co-ops from the 1990s in North Dakota now are corporate or out of business. ProGold succeeded in creating a local market in the region.

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overarching trends in the technology of agriculture.

Since Agweek’s start, readers have quickly adapted to air seeding drills, a trend led by the Dahl family’s Concord air drills in Fargo that was among the biggest changes in the industry. In the late 1980s, this technology from Concord (later Case-IH) began to revolutionize the use of land in the western growing areas – nearly eliminating the standard practice of “fallow” because crops could be grown into stubble without the moldboard plow.

Tractors were getting huge, of course, as chronicled in annual stories of “Big Iron” farm shows in West Fargo, N.D. In the 1960s and 1970s, machinery size had been led by the “Big Bud” from Montana, as well as the green-andwhite Knudson tractors from Crosby, and – of course – Steiger from Thief River Falls, Minn., and then Fargo. (I once made the mistake of writing in print they were “chartreuse.” They were “Steiger green,” sniffed then-President David Koentopf.)

All of this optimism ran into the buzzsaw of the 1980s farm credit crisis.

I remember standing next to Agweek reporter Randy Mikkelsen June 11, 1986, when Steiger President Irv Aal grimly announced his company would declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The local signature company was purchased

by International Harvester, merged with J.I. Case (later CNH). As the average age of farmers increased, they demanded more comfort in bigger machines that could do more.

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 9

The drought in the late 1980s drove much of the potato production in the Red River Valley into sandier, irrigated soil. Irrigation in North Dakota’s Kidder County area, as well as the Oakes, N.D., made those regions blossom with potatoes primarily for the Russet-type potatoes used for French fries. Ron D. Offutt of Fargo became the world’s largest potato producer.

In the 1990s, farmers in the Red River Valley and elsewhere started to climb out of a financial pit and often were helped by bigger machines that could cover more ground.

Farm leaders argued over genetically modified wheat, which they said might help solve the Fusarium head blight – scab – that robbed them of yield and grain quality. Fungicides became more common for cereal grains, and cereal farmers needed them in a wet period that started in 1993.

For most nonirrigated farms, there was a huge transition into row crops.

Monsanto developed Roundup Ready soybeans, which quickly spread into the Dakotas and Canada, as farmers could more efficiently keep their crops clear of moisture- and nutrient-robbing weeds. The Plant Variety Protection Act, which allowed the companies to legally protect technologies, came into play and farmers struggled over new policies that prevented them from legally “saving seed.” Among the crops that have gone Roundup Ready are sugar beets, of late, although companies have dealt with court challenges over the technology’s regulatory approval and its costs.

Seed technology has become much EVOLVE: See Page 10

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much more complicated as companies have genetically modified conventionally bred varieties of most crops and then “stack” these traits. It is unclear whether the market will continue to bear the technical fees, which seem fully adjustable by the companies that make them. Farmers are starting to deal with resistance to some of the chemicals and are starting to cross-stack traits to keep weeds in check.

Mechanically, farmers have made good use of the government’s Global Positioning System satellites, which let them triangulate their position in a field to feet and then – with the help of so-called RTK tower networks, with cross-manufacturer cooperation especially in the Red River Valley – offered centimeter-level accuracy.

Today, farmers often use auto-steer and technologyassisted machine control, which has allowed for increased control of planting, spraying and harvesting of crops. GPS has become indispensible for anything related to location, from the surface drainage and field tiling trend in the Red River Valley to the application of chemicals by aerial applicators. Many farmers often have the help of crop consultants to help them monitor their crops and offer advice on how to achieve and protect what they produce.

On the marketing side of things, farmers have gone from dependence on the printed word to moment-tomoment updates, delivered to their hand-held devices.

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Sugar beet processing remains the Red River Valley’s dominant, farmer-owned processing plant.

The region’s co-ops have spent millions in the past 25 years adding longer-term storage protection for frozen beets, allowing the companies to run their factories longer into the spring.

Ethanol continues as a dominating value-added factor in the Upper Midwest. This plant in Watertown, S.D., is gobbling corn, even as producers work to either keep production subsidies in place or to make permanent blender pumps and other marketstimulating efforts.

Processing and infrastructure

Northern Plains agriculture has long been dominated by a commodity mentality. In its early years, Agweek made unprecedented efforts to help its readers prosper in this world.

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Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

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would give them some “value-added” advantage. Here are some of the brick-and-mortar changes that have come in 25 years: ■ Sugar: American Crystal Sugar Co. invested huge sums into molasses desugarization technology, starting at its Hillsboro, N.D., processing plant. Even more, the company over the years spent millions more on buildings and equipment to more effectively deepfreeze beets so they could be processed longer into a spring, with less spoilage. Crystal at times has processed previous-year beets into June. Crystal also purchased a beet plant in Sidney, Mont., and holds it as a subsidiary.

■ Ethanol: Ethanol production has expanded mightily in the region. This started in the early 1980s in Marshall, Minn., but expanded throughout the state with the 10 percent mandated blends and production subsidies in that state. These co-ops expanded and others invested into 100 million-gallon facilities in South Dakota and finally North Dakota, as well as factories in the traditional Corn Belt. Some of the later investments faltered as grain prices skyrocketed in 2007 and 2008, but the key for ongoing prosperity in towns such as Hankinson, Casselton and Richardton in North Dakota and Fergus Falls, in Minnesota will be whether the industry can convince the public to consume more. On a separate track, the industry is working to expand ethanol and other kinds of biofuels production in places like Spiritwood, N.D., but it seems unclear whether those processes can be shifted from theory to reality on a commercial scale or how the market for new production will be developed.

■ Potatoes: Potato processing has continued to hum along in Grand Forks, N.D., and Park Rapids, Minn., even as Americans attempt to slim down and eat fewer French fries and potato chips. Potatoes expanded in the 1990s in central North Dakota to serve the Jamestown, N.D., processing plant, which for several years has been owned by Cavendish Farms in eastern Canada.

■ Corn: Golden Growers Cooperative and two sugar cooperatives invested $250 million in a corn wet milling plant in Wahpeton, N.D. They ended up leasing it to Cargill, which makes corn fructose products.

■ Wheat: Dakota Growers Pasta Co. became one of the survivors of the value-added co-ops in North Dakota. It grew into the nation’s third-largest pasta producing company. Farmer-shareholders eventually made it into a corporation and recently sold it to a Canadian company, amid some criticism. Spring Wheat Bakers, a North Dakota co-op that was envisioned as the “mother of all cooperatives,” failed when its members couldn’t make money in a far-flung production plant, built without debt in the Atlanta area.

■ Elevators: Shuttle train loading grain terminals popped up throughout the region, even in the face of more value-added ag processing efforts in the past decade. As farmers transitioned into higher-bushel crops like corn and soybeans in the region, country “terminals” have gotten huge and numerous. The most recent ones in places like New Rockford, N.D., and Harrold, S.D., are being notched up to 120-car loaders, surpassing the 100- and 110-car levels from a few years ago.

■ Oilseeds: Oilseed processing has expanded from the sunflower plants in West Fargo, Enderlin and Velva in the 1980s, to shift into canola oil production.

Future plans in North Dakota include canola oil

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 11

plants in the Hallock, Minn., area, where the crop has expanded. Meanwhile, South Dakota Soybean Processors seems to be humming along on a large scale in Volga, S.D., even though soy processing has had a more difficult time getting going in North Dakota.

■ Meat and livestock: The North American Bison Cooperative of New Rockford, N.D., is one of the few survivors in the meat processing game in North Dakota.

Today, the company is planning to change governance and has moved its processing into Fargo. A beef kill that was West Fargo’s signature business disappeared.

New harvest operations proposed in Aberdeen, S.D., have had a difficult time getting established. FK Partners, a South Korean company is still planning on larger-scale operation in North Dakota, although timetables remain unclear.

Larger-scale livestock production facilities are seeing mixed success in the region. There were two major failed co-op style efforts to bring a new beef kill to the Dakotas and smaller facilities failed. More beef finishing feedlots are being contemplated, especially with the availability of distiller’s grains and other byproducts, but the scale and number have been limited in some cases by local opposition. Large dairy efforts – notably, the MCC Dairy in Veblen, S.D. – have been hampered or worse by environmental issue, labor challenges or financial failures from risks involving volatile feed markets.

As I look back on the past 25 years – first as a competitor and then as a staff writer for Agweek – the pace of all of these changes astounds me. I don’t see the pace slowing any. I am confident Agweek editors and writers will continue to strive to keep you informed about changes to come – both in print and in online forms. One thing I can predict with certainty: It won’t be boring.

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Heart and soul

PAGE 12 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

By Mikkel Pates

Agweek Staff Writer

FARGO, N.D. – As Agweek magazine turns 25, Fayette Heidecker is the only employee in the news and advertising side who can say she’s put her heart and soul into the publication through its entire history.

Heidecker of Dickinson, N.D., was hired in July 1985.

“I can’t believe it’s been 25 years,” Heidecker says.

“When you think of 25 times 52 weeks a year, that’s a lot of deadlines.”

That’s right – 1,300 weekly deadlines, to be exact.

Much of Agweek’s success in the western region has been a result of Heidecker’s work, says Noel Letexier, who served as Agweek advertising director from 1988 to 2001.

“Her customers are as loyal as they get,” he says.

Heidecker is steeped in the agriculHeidecker ture and region she serves.

She grew up on a diversified farm in Taylor in Stark County, N.D., the fourth of five children. Her parents, Orville and Lois Gullickson, grew small grains and raised hogs and still live in Taylor.

Her father was a World War II veteran in the Pacific and came home to be a leader in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, giving her both a knowledge base for agriculture and an example of what’s important for personal interactions in business.

A string of ad ‘firsts’

After high school graduation in 1974, Heidecker immediately started working in advertising. Other than two years in California, she’s worked in it much of her life.

She can claim a string of “firsts” in an advertising career that is rich in relationships.

“I was one of the first reps for KLTC Radio in Dickinson, and then, five years later, at the new TV station, KQCD (named for ‘Queen City Dickinson’),” she says.

She’d left advertising to work over-the-road for a Bismarck, N.D., company called Control-O-Fax that did things like microfilming for dental and medical offices. In that job, she was in Bismarck a lot and one day read an ad in the Bismarck Tribune.

“It said, ‘New agricultural publication coming to this area – looking for sales people,’” she says. “They weren’t going to hire a rep in Dickinson, but they hired me anyway – I suppose because of my advertising experience of about 10 years. They also hired a Bismarck rep, so there were two of us right away.”

The excitement of a new magazine made it easy to sell.

“People were so excited about this publication coming to the area,” she recalls. “It was going to be an ‘editorial’ magazine, a marketing tool. It was going to come out every week, so it was more timely and current. And it was something where we’d have a western issue. It was actually a magazine for the west as well as the east.”

It was ‘Stockmen’s hour’

Initially, Heidecker would sell ads through the week and go to Bismarck once a week to put together ad layouts. There were implements and car dealerships in most of the little towns on the western landscape.

“We didn’t even have a fax machine, of course.

Everything was done by film. From Bismarck, things

25TH ANNIVERSARY

Western ad rep has been Agweek face for 25 years

■

Fayette Heidecker appeared in this Agweek ad as the magazine hit its 20year mark.

THE PERSONAL CONNECTIONS

Fayette Heidecker has relished the smaller, personal connections with clients. Some of them involve cats.

■ Call him “J.D.”: In the 1990s, when she called on Dakota Farm Equipment in Beach, N.D., the company had a cat. “His name was J.D., and they sold John Deere equipment,” she says.

■ Baby-sitting ad rep: “One time I was calling on Kris Ringwall,” director of the North Dakota State University Extension and Research Center in Dickinson. “His home is next to his office, so he happened to be home with his daughter, baby-sitting. Well, he needed to go to the office for a bit, so I baby-sat for him for awhile.”

■ Another cat tale: In 1992, her son, Jaden, was turning 3, and all he wanted for his birthday was a kitten. For some reason, Fayette wasn’t finding one in Dickinson, but her client, Harry Zachmann, who had West Plains Implement in Beach, had a solution. “He took us out to the farm and opened up a shed and all of these little kittens came out,” she says. “We picked out a little female calico and named her ‘Cookie.’ We had her for 15 years. I’d see Harry at the implement convention in Bismarck and would talk about how I still had Cookie.” would be sent to Grand Forks,” Heidecker recalls.

Larry Schnell, a co-owner of Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, immediately saw the magazine’s potential and has had an ad on the back cover since the very beginning.

“He felt everybody was ready for something like this,” Heidecker says. “His sale was on Thursdays, so Friday mornings, I’d get the sale report and call Grand Forks. It would take us about an hour, but I’d have to read the auction results line by line over the phone.

“I’ve always felt like all of my clients are my friends,” she says, and that has been a comfort to her as she has worked on the road in a vast rural landscape and sometimes harsh climates. She’s been snowbound on the road three times.

“I’ve felt like a kind of partner, to help make their business better,” she says.

Heidecker says many things have changed about her work.

The number of companies on the landscape has changed, just as the number of farms has changed.

Today, 75 to 80 percent of her clients are involved in livestock, especially as implement dealer ownership has consolidated in larger companies in the Red River Valley.

Much has changed – of course.

What changes, stays

Heidecker works with livestock sale barns as well as bull producers and other input companies. The pace in the business world has grown quicker as people cover larger territories and clients rely more on telecommunications to do business on the road.

There has been a parade of technological advances that seem rudimentary today. Fax machines and computers became commonplace and useful in the late 1980s. Cell phones aren’t always reliable in all places, even today, but still have changed the picture. Digital cameras have been big.

Technology has allowed ranchers, companies and Agweek to do more with fewer people. It has made the work an ever-changing thing.

“My job has never been boring or stale because there’s always something to change your ways and learn,” Heidecker says. “I’m a lifelong learner.”

“Larry now sends sale results directly to a modem over the phone,” she says of Schnell at Stockmen’s in Dickinson. “We’ve come a long way.”

But what hasn’t changed is that there are very few people who sell cattle with him who don’t read Agweek.

Growing relationships

One thing that doesn’t change is that she’s “still fired up about Agweek,” Heidecker says.

“So many people tell me they like the magazine. It covers such a large area, the advertiser has a tool to do it all,” she says.

She married Gary Heidecker in 1981. They have two children, including a son, Justin, who was the “first baby” born of an Agweek staffer, in June 1986. Another first.

As with farmers and ranchers, she works out of her home, where she balances work with family.

Heidecker’s business style is to be completely involved in the community in the western agriculture that she loves – advertising businesses, the ranchers and farmers they serve, as well as the groups that represent them.

“Since I’ve been so far from the home office, I have enjoyed being involved in clients’ special events,” she says, running through a list of farm show names starting with Glendive, Mont., and Williston, Dickinson, Bismarck and Bowman in North Dakota.

“I try to help and do something to be involved,” she says. “If somebody ever asked me to do something, I did. I’ve never felt like I worked 8-to-5, so if it was good for the client, it was good for me and for Agweek in general.”

One example is that Agweek has been supreme champion sponsor at the West River Livestock Show in Dickinson since the event started.

“We really try to sponsor and be involved in as many events as we can,” she says.

“The clients I work with – they’re the best. They want their customers to be successful; I want them to be successful. We’re all connected to the ag sector, and everybody wants everybody to be successful.”

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 13

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Hagstrom’s on The Hill

PAGE 14 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

25TH ANNIVERSARY

Agweek correspondent Jerry Hagstrom, a nationally known agricultural journalist in Washington and a native of the Bismarck, N.D., area, keeps Northern Plains farmers and ranchers in touch with happenings in the U.S. Capitol.

Longtime correspondent is Agweek’s eye on Washington ■

By Mikkel Pates

Agweek Staff Writer

FARGO, N.D. – Jerry Hagstrom has been Agweek magazine’s eyes and ears in Washington since 1994.

A native of the Bismarck/ Wilton area in North Dakota, Hagstrom is known for getting the behind-the-scenes scoop on the national agriculture picture, tailoring his coverage to the readers in the Northern Plains that he knows and loves so well.

Jerry was born in 1947, the only child of Oscar and Marion Hagstrom. He remembers doing some farm work in his youth, but he got hives from grain dust at age 4, so he never looked to the farm as a career.

The Hagstroms farmed near Wilton, but lived in houses in town in the winter – first in Bismarck, then Wilton and then again in Bismarck, where Jerry graduated from Bismarck High School in 1965.

A friend had gone to the University of Denver for a master’s degree, so Hagstrom went there, too, picking up a double major in economics and Spanish.

After college, he moved to Washington, where he taught junior high school Spanish through 1971. Hagstrom had been a student- journalist, so he picked up a job as a Washington “stringer” for the Mandan (N.D.) Morning Pioneer back home.

The Morning Pioneer was owned by the Conrad family.

His editor was Joyce Conrad, the wife of Charles Conrad and an aunt to Kent Conrad, who would go on to be a U.S. sena-

tor. Kent’s brother, Roan, had been a founding editor of the National Journal in Washington and returned to Mandan to become managing editor of the Morning Pioneer. He hired Hagstrom as a reporter.

In 1974, Hagstrom went to Colorado as a freelance writer.

He became a campaign worker and then a congressional aide to Sen. Gary Hart, but in 1976, he returned to Washington for good.

He started working with Neal Peirce, another founder of National Journal, who wrote a syndicated column on state and local government.

Hagstrom worked for Peirce for 12 years. In 1983, they together published the book “The Book of America: Inside the 50 States Today.” In 1984, Hagstrom started writing about the political consulting industry and, more independently, for National Journal and its Congress Daily, which goes to the movers and shakers on and around Capitol Hill.

Back to agriculture

“I had always done an occasional piece about agriculture, but in 1994, Mike Jacobs called me up,” Hagstrom says.

Jacobs was editor of the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, which owned Agweek. Jacobs, who had worked with Hagstrom for a short time in 1973 at the Mandan paper, was looking for someone to fill the Washington correspondent post for the weekly ag magazine. Sonja Hillgren, a native South Dakotan, had left the Agweek post to become Washington correspondent for Farm

Mikkel Pates, Agweek staff

Journal.

“I was working at National Journal, primarily, and at that same period, they’d started Congress Daily, and they needed to have someone cover the farm bill,” Hagstrom recalls. “The very first story I covered for Agweek was the nomination of Dan Glickman to be Clinton’s agriculture secretary. The nomination announcement was held in the White House Rose Garden on a wet, cold day in December of 1994.”

Hagstrom covered the 1996, the 2002 and the 2008 farm bills and now is covering the 2012

farm bill for which numerous hearings already have been held.

Hagstrom gets constant feedback from readers of Congress Daily, often those connected to the making of legislation and policies. Often, Hagstrom is in the Midwest, giving speeches to agricultural groups, and that’s when he hears the most from Agweek readers.

In recent years, he got lots of feedback when he exposed that the Australian Wheat Board had provided kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in an effort to maintain its share of that coun-

try’s wheat imports.

“To me the most interesting development over the years I’ve been covering agriculture was in 1996, when the ‘Freedom to Farm’ bill was passed.

The theory was that farm subsidies were going to wither away in the next seven years. And that, of course, did not happen,” he says.

Opponents of farm subsidies were on the rise, but times changed.

“I believe the commodity producers got themselves organized in the 2002 farm bill and you could say they strengthened or restored the subsidies that were supposedly on their way to elimination,” he says.

More recently, Hagstrom has been fascinated with the rise of ethanol, which “in some ways overwhelms the farm bill in significance,” he says.

The emerging topic, of course, is the increased importance of national nutrition programs as a driver of farm policy. “It’s the concern about Americans’ health, which, I think, is going to make a major impact on what Americans eat in coming years. In turn, that will have a major impact on what farmers grow,” he says.

Through it all, Hagstrom gets satisfaction from his Agweek association.

“I was very happy to be able to write for a weekly that is published in the state where I was born and grew up,” Hagstrom says. “I am thrilled to be able to write for farmers who were friends of my father’s, or their children who have taken over those farms.”

“I was very happy to be able to write for a weekly that is published in the state where I was born and grew up. I am thrilled to be able to write for farmers who were friends of my father’s, or their children who have taken over those farms.”

Jerry Hagstrom

Hagstrom

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 15

25TH ANNIVERSARY

PAGE 16 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

AGWEEK

Continued from Page 3

out and design guy. And Juan Miguel Pedraza was a parttime clerk. He’d been working for Bev Kees, making elevator calls. I kind of inherited the other half of his time.”

When Maidenberg started getting big ideas, Durkin was at his side.

Among other things, Maidenberg and Durkin noticed that while there were a number of regional publications and tabloids in the area, there was an opportunity for “a lot of good, hard-edged information” rather than depending heavily on county agent reports and wire stories.

“We thought we’d actually go out and report on important stories – compile statistics.

There’d be a niche for us,” Durkin says. “Our goal was to figure out what kind of information we wanted in there, how we could go about getting it, adjusting and making it useful to people and putting it in a display that is easy to follow and read.”

Where do we fit?

Durkin doesn’t remember exactly how they came up with the name, but there’s the logic of it being an ag publication that came out weekly – Agweek.

One thing that Durkin remembers was thinking they would put out 48 pages a week,

and he realized one thing: “We’re going to need more people.”

It was early in 1985. They decided to start publication in the summer, and the first issue was Aug. 5, 1985.

Agweek started hiring more reporters with the vision to fill the publication with stories on feedgrains, wheat, soybeans, corn and specialty crops.

“It was just a situation that the more we looked at the task, the more we realized we had to add people,” Durkin says.

From the get-go, Maidenberg started investing in what would become a big reputation in ag news.

“I remember they sent me to the Soviet Union,” Durkin remembers. “It was truly the Soviet Union back then – still Communist, still one big country.”

He went on an ag tour for a couple of weeks, checking out farms and how things were done over there. Durkin says there was a lot of curiosity about the Soviet Union at the time. A decade earlier, the Soviets had shaken up agriculture in the U.S. and around the world by buying grain, boosting prices to then-historic levels.

“I was in a potato field with a bunch of Russians and a few Americans, and I saw a beetle on one of the plants,” Durkin says. “A guy came up and saw me looking at the plant – pointed to it, and he says ‘Colorado.’ It was the same beetle – the Colorado potato beetle – we had in the Red River Val-

ley. It hit me that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, these guys (farmers) are up against the same thing. It was an epiphany, I guess.”

Durkin says the hiring buildup was impressive and the paper attracted impressive staff members.

“We put some ads in ‘Editor & Publisher’ magazine, and I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. Turns out, there was a lot of interest.

Durkin remembers going to Washington with Agweek staffer Burbach. The two successfully recruited Sonja Hillgren as Washington-based correspondent.

“I find it amazing we were able to hire her,” Durkin recalls. “She had great contacts on Capitol Hill and really knew her stuff.”

(Hillgren, a Sioux Falls, S.D., native, went on to be editor of Farm Journal magazine. She died of cancer in 2007.) Other early reporters had master’s degrees and MBAs.

Beyond the farm crisis

Deliberately, the Herald/Agweek executives decided that the farm crisis that spawned foreclosures, tractorcades, farm protests and Farm Aid would not be Agweek’s main focus.

“It was part of the story, but certainly was one we didn’t want to focus on,” Durkin says.

“Every newspaper was writing about ‘woe are we,’ and we were writing for the people who were farming, trying to

survive – trying to HELP them survive.”

Marketing and national policy were the two biggest focus areas.

“From a news person’s point of view, it made a lot of sense,” Maidenberg says. “Farmers were interested in news and information and weren’t getting as much as I thought they were seeking.”

Among the farmers encouraging Agweek were Willard Pederson and Keith Bjerke, both of Northwood, N.D., and Bob Bergland, who had been U.S. agriculture secretary under President Jimmy Carter and still was in national leadership positions in cooperatives.

Most competing publications of the day were regional or were focusing on crop production – how to grow more grain or livestock. Few talked about the marketing and trade side of things. Some farmers were getting information online, but it wasn’t as simple as today.

“At the time, if there was a big commodity sale to a foreign country, we’d report on it, or who was thinking about buying,” Durkin says.

Agweek hired North Dakota native Ed Maixner, a veteran of The Forum in Fargo, to cover ag finance, covering the strength of the U.S. dollar and key interest rates. Jon Knutson, who recently returned to Agweek as a reporter after nearly 20 years, succeeded Maixner.

“It got to the point where it

was ridiculous; you’d get tired of hearing about the strength of the dollar, but it was a really big deal, once you realized the influence of those kinds of things,” Durkin recalls.

These were heady times.

Durkin “wore a path” to Maidenberg’s office. The activist ag publisher became well-known for seeing news items and passing piles of clippings along, marking them up with his green, felt-tipped pen – demanding immediate attention.

“Whether I was having a good day or a bad day depended on how much green ink I’d see,” Durkin says with a smile.

Pushing the envelope

By the peak in 1987, Agweek had bulked up to about 15 people on the editorial side alone.

The tabloid newsprint Agweek “magazine” had an increasingly impressive staff. At one point, it had its own graphic artist and its own photographer. It had bureaus in Washington, as well as Billings, Mont., and Fargo. That didn’t count the advertising and circulation personnel.

“We kind of outgrew the Herald newsroom,” Durkin recalls, so Agweek moved into a nearby building downtown.

“We were writing for people who understood things – like ‘PIK-and-roll,’” Durkin says, referring to a government program that was famous in the AGWEEK: See Page 17

Agweek through the 25 years

1964-1983 – Farm and Home section is part of Thursday newspaper. Called a “green sheet” because of color of paper. Runs 16 to 20 pages, mostly low-rated classified. Editorial staff is one-half FTE.

June 2, 1983 – Farm and Home expands circulation to reach nonsubscribing farmers in both Herald and Fargo area, basically entire Red River Valley. Magazine only is mailed out to additional 24,000 farm op-

erators. Staff increased to four full-timers.

AGWEEK

Continued from Page 16

Reagan years. Farmers used “Payment-in-Kind” certificates to redeem stored bushels in government storage programs.

Farmers sometimes would fly in light airplanes to remote counties in North Dakota and elsewhere to redeem “certs” for more bushels.

“We’d do most of our stories during the week, but then, once the markets closed Friday, that’s when we really cranked.

We’d start doing market wraps for all of the commodities. Fridays were long days for us because we wanted to be as fresh as we could, and we didn’t start writing those stories until the numbers were out.”

Agweek was looking like a bulked-up regional publication, but behind-the-scenes, Maidenberg had ambitions to take the publication national.

“We weren’t afraid to go after things,” Durkin says. “We thought about (a national scope), but we had to test it on a regional basis – seeing how it worked, fine-tuning content and presentation,” Durkin says. “Maidenberg came up with the phrase that he ‘wanted to be the ‘Barron’s’ of agriculture,’” referring to the Dow Jones & Co. weekly that is national in scope, focused on finance and markets.

Maidenberg and Durkin came up with a plan that included a main headquarters in Minneapolis. There would be satellite offices in Grand Forks and elsewhere, and the publication would be sent to points around the country on

Sundays and distributed on Mondays.

“Distribution was a big deal,” Durkin says of the challenges. “We looked at the USA Today model. We looked at the advertising potential, took numbers and crunched them down. We said, ‘OK, here’s what it would take and what your returns would be.’”

Maidenberg says the situation may have been different had the Internet been more developed as a means of transmitting information. But at the time, the costs of transmission and the need to have regional editions and printing were overwhelming.

“I’d still like to try it, national, but I don’t think ink-onpaper is in the cards because the printing and distribution hurdles are still huge,” he says.

“But who knows? Maybe electronic readers will solve that issue.”

Right-sizing to reality

In those buildup years, Agweek, was not instantly expected to be profitable.

“When we were starting up, we had lots of expenses and didn’t have the revenue yet to meet them,” Maidenberg recalls. “On a stand-alone basis, we weren’t profitable in the first few years. I have to hand it to the folks at Knight Ridder because they gave us sufficient time to establish Agweek as a publication with advertising and circulation to go into the black and be profitable.”

Long-term, Maidenberg and Durkin could project the national concept could be profitable, but only at about 10 percent return-on-investment

July 9, 1984 – Farm and Home spun out of daily newspaper, publication day changed to Monday. Circulation area expanded to counties border-

25TH ANNIVERSARY

per year. Then, the newspaper business was more profitable than today, and the then-Miamibased chain was making an ROI in the neighborhood of 20 percent on its papers.

“At that time, we decided to pull in our horns – do what we were doing, but not national,” Durkin says.

Agweek started scaling back to “right-size” itself for the regional market. Some of its larger personalities went on to other jobs – Hillgren to Farm Journal; reporter Randall Mikkelsen to the wire service powerhouse Reuters, where he became a White House correspondent, and other duties internationally and domestically.

“We tried to do the best we could with fewer people, knowing that if we were going to keep it going we couldn’t do it on the hope of getting bigger,” Durkin remembers.

In 1992, Durkin left his post as Agweek editor and returned to the Herald as executive sports editor.

“They were going to cut back to ‘X’ number of jobs,” Durkin says. “At that point, I decided if we’re at the end of the road in terms of building Agweek and others wanted to stay, I’d just as soon go back into daily journalism and it’d save a spot (at Agweek) for somebody else.”

Juan Miguel Pedraza served next as Agweek editor, followed by Duane Mattson, Julie Copeland, Rona Johnson, Kevin Bonham and Kim Deats, who moved to Agweek from the Grand Forks Herald in November 1996.

Durkin continued with the Herald through the flood of 1997. He was offered a job by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

ing Red River Valley. Circulation hits 35,000. Staffing stays basically the same.

Aug. 5, 1985 – Farm and Home name changed

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 17

in December 1997.

He still gets to the home area six or eight times a year. Fishing is a passion and he hunts deer up near Inkster every fall.

Now 58, Durkin is a St. Paul editor for the Star Tribune.

While not a national publication today, Agweek is still a national award-winner and holds true to its journalistic ideals.

Armed with new technologies, fewer reporters and editors continue to serve Agweek readers and regularly cover stories throughout North Dakota South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and Canada’s prairie provinces.

Since 2000, reporters have gone assignment to Cuba, China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, France and Germany. Agweek columns still are filled with news of agricultural markets, national political maneuvering, as well as technological trends and farm policy issues. It has award-winning columnists Jerry Hagstrom in Washington and Ryan Taylor in Towner, N.D. Many Agweek staffers or contributors have become leaders, with four former staffers elected as presidents of the North American Agricultural Journalists organization.

On July 1, 2006, Agweek became part of the Forum Communications Co., when the Grand Forks Herald was sold to the Fargo-based company.

Mike Jacobs became editor and publisher of the Herald in 2006 and so took on the role as Agweek publisher.

“I think Agweek has established itself as an important element in journalism about agriculture in the Northern Plains,” Jacobs says. “Its focus has always been on the busi-

to Agweek. Plans launched for conversion to paid campaign. Addition of 24 FTEs: 10 editorial, two circulation, two data processing, five advertising, five

ness side of agriculture – the way markets and public policy affect agriculture. Frankly, Agweek does that better than other publications do.”

Maidenberg retired from the Herald in 2003. He became vice president for programs at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami and remained associated with the foundation through March 2009. In June 2009, he took a consulting post with the Collins Center for Public Policy, a think tank that has a project dealing with the future of communities affected by the Everglades restoration.

“Those communities are heavily dependent on agriculture – particularly sugar cane, and to some extent winter vegetables, including sweet corn and peppers,” he says. “So you see, I’ve gotten back into agriculture, indirectly.”

Maidenberg says that while the scale of Agweek has returned to a regionalist vision, it still is true to its editorial core.

“There’s always that news and analysis. I think we’ve held true to that. And I still get the magazine, by the way.”

He says that while there are uncertainties for all print publications because of the Internet, there also are greater opportunities for specialized publications like Agweek,because of its focus on ag.

“Agweek is kind of a general magazine – it’s not covering a single crop or completely a single region. Its editorial approach and timeliness remain great strengths,” he says. “But like every publication that came up out of print, it’s going to have to experiment as it makes its way forward.”

production.

Aug. 26, 1985 – Launch of western edition of Agweek to rate base of 16,000.

PAGE 18 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

By Mikkel Pates

“People read your column and it’s kind of like a soap opera of your own life – the old equipment, the ornery animals.

Sometimes you think you’re the only one who’s had a wheel fall off a tractor, but if Ryan has, too, they feel a little better about it.”

Ryan Taylor

Agweek Staff Writer

The lighter side of ag 25TH ANNIVERSARY

■

Taylor’s ‘Cowboy Logic’ got its start in Agweek

FARGO, N.D. – While much of Agweek’s content is serious agribusiness, one career launched by the publication has focused on the lighter side of farming and ranching.

Ryan Taylor has defined this role with his “Cowboy Logic” columns, which have appeared in Agweek since 1994. The column launched a public speaking and entertainment career, and didn’t hurt his political career, either.

Taylor, who just turned 40, continues to ranch and farm near Towner, N.D. His family homesteaded on the place in 1903. He writes tales about ranch life with his wife, Nikki, and their children, “little Bud,” Ole and Sylvia, ages 6, 4 and 2. Today’s Taylors raise “cattle, hay, horses and, now, kids,” he says, on his website.

Agweek was Taylor’s first major break in the writing business.

He graduated in 1992 from North Dakota State University in Fargo with a double-major in agricultural economics and mass communications.

Back then, Agweek was a bulked-up editorial powerhouse, with markets and political reporting on a national scale. It was before the days of the Internet.

“We used Agweek magazine in college for some of our courses: particularly livestock marketing, with the futures and options,” he recalls.

After graduation, Taylor went home to ranch with his father, Bud, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Back home, Taylor wrote some freelance stories – serious stuff – for area publications, including the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers. His mother, Liz, an “FDR Democrat,” had written a “Meanwhile Back at the Ranch” column in the local newspaper. His dad was an “Eisenhower Republican.”

“What I learned from Dad was the saying: ‘There are two kinds of people – those who have something to say and those who just have to say something.’ He was the first kind,” Taylor says.

One year, Ryan wrote an essay for a contest sponsored by the American Quarter Horse Association, and it placed in the top 10 nationally.

That plan didn’t work out, but he was getting a higher profile.

After that ended, he went to work for Fort Dodge Animal Health, calling on veterinarians in the region. He met his wife in 2001 while he was working in Watford City, N.D. She was attending a veterinary health meeting with her brother.

“The local vet was actually the NDSU Homecoming queen when I was NDSU king back in 1991, but that’s aside from the point,” he says.

The meeting involved “the sexy topics of internal parasites in cattle and bovine respiratory disease.”

The pair married July 5, 2003.

In 2002, he was encouraged to challenge a local state senator. He won the seat by about 12 percentage points in a district that has about 10 percent more Republicans than Democrats.

In 2006, he defended it by 32 points. Taylor sits on the agriculture committee, but feels some of his best work is on education and transportation issues.

“I see it as another step in community service,” Taylor says. “You’ve done your church council or school board, and then you’re asked to serve in this next capacity.

Some use it for political purposes, for grandstanding, but I feel it’s more about public service for your neighbors.”

Rural humor, sans politics

As a columnist, Taylor has stayed away from political topics. The column is about farm and ranch life and small towns.

“There’s enough partisan stuff going on in the world,” Taylor reasons. “People like to read about people, without looking for the political angles.”

While much of his focus is humor, Taylor says it is some of the more serious columns that seem to evoke the most response.

Early on, he wrote a column titled, “Were you born in a barn?” It focused on “humbleness in a world where humility isn’t always respected” and where he drew connections between the Nativity stable and the world of animal husbandry where he lives.

He would get responses about his mother’s struggle with ovarian cancer and the family’s decision to get his father into long-term care.

“People respond because a lot of them have gone through this with aging parents, and it’s Not long after the columns started gaining pretty hard,” he says. acceptance, Ryan Taylor started after-dinner Taylor’s mother died in 2009 and his father Hillary and cattle entertainment speaking. He says he didn’t died in May. He had been getting used to operknow how to sing, but he spiced up the act Taylor remembers then-Agweek editor ating the ranch on his own, but acknowledges with “old-style rope tricks,” jumping in and out Julie Copeland and Grand Forks (N.D.) he’s looking forward to his children getting of spinning loops.

Herald editor Mike Jacobs hiring him to older and helping out on the ranch. free-lance.

Not long after the columns started gaining “I think my first story was about Hillary acceptance, Taylor started after-dinner enterClinton and her cattle futures trading,” whether the then-first lady tainment speaking. He says he didn’t know how to sing, but he spiced could have made profits in the cattle market without inside help. up the act with “old-style rope tricks,” jumping in and out of spinning In 1994, Agweek wanted something for its editorial page. It would be loops. more of a human interest thing and personal.

In 1998, Taylor published his first book of his compiled columns.

“That was the first version of ‘Cowboy Logic,’” Taylor recalls, alHe published a second book in 2003. His columns now appear in sevthough he’d also written a column under the same name in his fratereral publications throughout North America. nity newsletter. The title is a common one in ranch lexicon and was a “People get involved in your family, your operation – involved in line in a song from the late 1980s by artist Michael Martin Murphey. your life,” he says. “People want to be uplifted.”

As Taylor’s popularity grew in the magazine, it catapulted him into other jobs that would supplement his 200-cow beef operation.

One memorable column for readers was about “Daddy day-care,” He became a staffer for Northern Plains Premium Beef, a cooperawhen he would take his first son with him for chores after his second tive that tried to launch in the mid-1990s to build a beef kill and proson was born. cessing plant in the North Dakota and South Dakota.

“People read your column, and it’s kind of like a soap opera of your “I was a rancher intent on investing and processing cattle in the sysown life – the old equipment, the ornery animals. Sometimes you tem,” he says. think you’re the only one who’s had a wheel fall off a tractor, but if

Zeal for Agweek

25TH ANNIVERSARY

Noel LeTexier, now a pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Manvel, N.D., was advertising sales director for Agweek from 1988 to 2001 and often represented the publication after that.

Agweek and Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald staff slept on pews in the church during the flood of 1997, when the publication almost ended.

■

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 19

Longtime ad director a champion for advertisers

By Mikkel Pates

Back to ag’s future

FARGO, N.D. – Through 13 years with Agweek, former advertising sales director Noel LeTexier often heard farmers and ranchers tell him he worked for their “bible” of agriculture.

“People said it all of the time, especially the farm wives.,” says LeTexier, who, ironically, has since become a minister.

For many advertisers and ag show-goers, LeTexier was the face of Agweek. As the longestrunning advertising chief for the publication, he helped guide it through its mercurial national ambitions and back to a solid competitive regionalist vision.

LeTexier had a a zeal for the magazine – its readers and advertisers – that remains with the advertising staff today. Retired in 2001, LeTexier lingered as a consultant and show staffer through 2008.

“My last show was out in Mitchell, S.D., outside a tent, the temperatures were in the 90s and the wind was blowing 30 mph. and the dirt was flying. But the people showed up,” he says, laughing. “It was a huge show.”

More on the Rev. LeTexier’s spiritual awakening later. First, his Agweek story.

NOEL: See Page 21

Agweek Staff Writer

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LeTexier grew up on a farm in Leroy, N.D., in Pembina County. His father quit farming when Noel was a youngster and worked for a neighboring farmer. At age 10, he accompanied his father to that job. Later, Noel hired on with a neighbor through high school.

“It’s hard to imagine today that when I was 15 years old, I was out in the field, combining with a Minneapolis pull-type combine,” LeTexier says. “I couldn’t imagine my own kids doing that at that age, being out there by themselves combining. I loved farming – loved it. And that’s why I loved working at Agweek, working with farmers and farm businesses.”

LeTexier graduated from Cavalier (N.D.) High School in 1961. He went on to the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and majored in history and political science.

“I’d intended to go to law school, but I was married at 22 and working two jobs and I was tired,” he says. “I decided, ‘I’m not going to struggle through this for another three years.’”

He started a career as an insurance adjustor but quickly decided he wasn’t suited for accident investigations.

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NOEL

Continued from Page 19

In October 1967, he started a career in advertising at the Grand Forks Herald.

His first boss was Henry Dibbern, who also taught advertising at UND. Dibbern died at age 51, but taught him a lot.

“Henry loved to teach,” LeTexier recalls. “He had me in his office right away in the morning and we’d study advertising – how write copy, ‘benefit headlines,’ how to do layouts. He was an incredible teacher – very ethical.

He wanted things done right, and he wanted customers treated right.

“I guess I learned those ethics from Henry. You told customers the truth straight out. You didn’t try to jerk them around about what the ads were going to cost or what the circulation really was. You told them what they were getting with their money, and you did what they wanted with their ads.

And you didn’t run it unless

you had their OK.” LeTexier learned other things the hard way.

He drank too much. Alcohol led to the breakup of his first marriage. But after the wreckage of addiction, he found Jesus Christ and took his last drink July 19, 1981. He spent six weeks drying out at the Glenmore Recovery Center in Crookston, Minn.

“I was a new man!” he declares, only half-joking he was “pastorized” off of booze. He would marry his wife, Diana, in 1983.

A new man for Agweek

LeTexier started by selling advertising to urban retailers, but also agricultural clients for what then was referred to as the Herald’s “Farm and Home,” or casually, the “green sheet.” It was the Herald’s farm insert that came out on Thursdays.

“One fellow – Roger Plattes – put the whole thing together – editorial, makeup,” LeTexier remembers. “He loved that green sheet and he did a great job with it.”

25TH ANNIVERSARY

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 21

“Those were tough years, very tough years – ’88, ’89 and ’90. Very tough going, but we made it.”

Noel LeTexier

Mike Maidenberg came to the Herald as publisher in 1982. The Indiana native observed the success of the green sheet and other ag weeklies in the area – publications like the Back Forty in the Red River Valley and Agri News in the Rochester, Minn. He thought the Herald could produce something like that and more.

Fresh out of the Knight Ridder home office in Miami, Maidenberg also knew how to convince his friends in Miami to try for a bigger ag play.

Knight Ridder had an interest in specialty publications. The Miami Herald flagship newspaper had launched a Business Monday section, which was an early success. The Herald envisioned an expanded ag weekly – “Agweek” – not as an insert,

but as a free-standing publication.

“Once the concept was explained and people I reported to in Miami understood that it was a free-standing weekly, we could show them the importance of ag, the dollars that would come through it, it wasn’t a great hurdle,” Maidenberg recalls.

LeTexier wasn’t yet on the Agweek staff, but he heard how it was going. The first step was establishing a circulation presence.

“They started out with ‘free’ Agweeks – 55,000 copies delivered every week,” LeTexier says. “That went on for 18 months and then we started wanting to charge for it, and circulation dropped considerably. We had to deal with that for years – people wanting it

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to come free.” But it was always the plan that circulation would be a part of the revenue stream.

Happily, subscribers started to see the publication’s worth and the magazine retained its paid circulation status, which was important to advertisers.

Agweek’s first sales director was Tom Kuchera, who would go on to be advertising manager for the Herald. Second in command was Roger Brokke.

LeTexier, who had been selling advertising both for the Herald and for Agweek, became Agweek’s advertising director on Feb. 1, 1988.

LeTexier took on the advertising directorship just as a two-year drought was setting in.

“Those were tough years, very tough years – ’88, ’89 and ’90. Very tough going, but we made it,” he says.

After the drought, things started to pick up. Farmers and their suppliers were beginning to climb out of the whole financial pit of the mid1980s, and into a recovery period of the early 1990s. The

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25TH ANNIVERSARY

NOEL

Continued from Page 21

week.

The editorial department bulked up, the advertising staff bulked up to support of a high-value product. LeTexier mentions names like John Wayne Gass, Dave McSparron and Dave Berndt.

“We had some great people,” LeTexier says.

Dave Fleck sold out of a Bismarck, in an office managed ably Mary Sorlie. Fayette Heidecker, who remains Agweek’s only original advertising or editorial staff member, worked out of Dickinson.

In Fargo, Agweek had office manager Peggy Novakoske. Jim Martodam was the first sales rep, joined by Mitch Anderson and Matt Herman, who went on to national publications. Eventually, John Fetsch was the Fargo rep.

In the buildup days, Agweek’s main circulation strength lay in the Red River Valley and four-state region (North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana) but with a pumped up editorial staff, the publication was going throughout the world. Numerous copies went to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

While the publication found its legs, the Knight Ridder folks wanted more. By 1994, they decided long-range profit projections a 10 percent return-on-investment were not enough to stay with a national approach. LeTexier thinks that if today’s electronic transmission of information had been available in those days, things might have turned out differently, but there was no way to know that. He’s philosophical.

NOEL: See Page 29

Close encounters of the public kind

By Mikkel Pates

Agweek Staff Writer

FARGO, N.D. – Noel LeTexier is the consummate outside person for an organization. He most relished meeting Agweek readers and advertisers at farm shows like Big Iron in Fargo, N.D., the KMOT Ag Show in Minot, N.D., the West River Ag Expo in Dickinson, N.D., and the KFYR Agri-International show in Bismarck. He spent happy hours chatting it up visitors at the Red River Valley Winter Show in Crookston, Minn., the North Dakota Winter Show in Valley City, N.D., and the M.A.T.E. Show in Great Falls, Mont.

Readers energized him, they would tell him information they got in the magazine improved their lives and businesses.

“It made you feel good because they respected the magazine,” he says. “When I talked to people and told them I worked for Agweek, that meant something.”

Wherever he went, Agweek readers approached him.

“One time I was speaking to a Gideon’s group at Harvey, N.D.,” LeTexier says. “There was a fellow there from Wolf Point, Mont., who heard I worked for Agweek. He came up to me after the speech and said he got Agweek. He says he learned from the magazine that if he hauled his cattle hundreds of miles to Dickinson he’d make more money.

Later, I talked to Larry Schnell at Stockmen’s Livestock in Dickinson, and he said yeah, that fel-

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low now brought his cattle to Dickinson every December.”

“The farm wives, especially, would tell us it was their husbands’ ‘bible,’” of agricultural information, LeTexier says. “I remember one woman saying that her husband would drive to the mailbox and sit there, waiting for it to come on Mondays.”

Of course, there were the occasional complaints.

“I remember getting an angry letter from a farmer in Finland,” LeTexier says, laughing. “He was complaining because we’d canceled his subscription while his check was in the mail. There must have been something in Agweek that he liked.”

LeTexier remembers one particular dust-up with an advertiser.

“This advertiser was in the western part of the state and took serious offense at a story we had in Agweek,” LeTexier recalls.

With a clear divide between ads and news, LeTexier had to take the heat from the caller.

“He didn’t spend much money with us at all and he spent a huge amount with one of our competitors,” LeTexier says.

“We started investigating the story and it turned out the same item had run in the competitors’ publication two weeks earlier. Turns out, nobody had even noticed it (in that publication). That’s how thoroughly they read Agweek – word for word.”

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PAGE 24 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

Who are they and where are they now?

■

Agweek Staff Reports

FARGO, N.D. – Over 25 years, Agweek magazine always has had a stable of dedicated editorial staffers.

Some of them still are pursuing their careers locally; others have moved to other pursuits.

Here are some mini-biographies and updates from the editorial staffers we were able to get in touch with – both past and present. They’re arranged roughly according to the dates they started at Agweek:

Mike Burbach

■ Current address: St. Paul.

■ Agweek career: 1985 to 1990, news editor.

■ Background: Age 51. Graduate of Pembina (N.D.)

High School, 1977; Graduate of the University of North Dakota, 1982.

■ Career since Agweek: Newsroom management at various Knight Ridder papers (until Knight Ridder ceased to exist in 2006) and at the Minot (N.D.) Daily News. Currently, editorial page editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

■ Memorable Agweek moments: Two come immediately to mind: 1. The drought of 1988, when Agweek created a hot line to identify and attempt to answer questions about federal drought relief. We heard directly from a thousand farmers and ranchers, drew on contacts in Washington and state ASCS offices and published as many answers as we could get.

2. A dumb mistake: I don’t remember the particulars, but my mistake involved a steer with testicles.

More than 20 years later, I’m still embarrassed about that.

Congratulations to Agweek on its 25th anniversary, to the readers and advertisers who have made it work through the years, and to its leaders and staff, present and past. Looking back, I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to work on the magazine. I learned a ton from my bosses, colleagues, from our news sources and from Agweek readers. Not a day goes by that I don’t draw on what I learned there. My best wishes to you all.

Randall Mikkelsen

■ Current address: Plaistow, N.H. (exurban Boston).

■ Agweek career: 1984 to 1987 West

Fargo, N.D., bureau reporter, 1987 to 1988 Washington reporter.

■ Background: Age 53. Native of Colorado. Grew up in California and Minnesota. University of Minnesota, bachelor’s degree, 1981; master’s degree, 1984.

■ Career since: Thomson Reuters (formerly Reuters) 1988 to present: Mikkelsen Posts in Stockholm, Philadelphia, Washington (White House correspondent, news editor, national security and justice beats), and now Boston, international regulatory affairs.

■ Agweek memories: I am still proud of the cover stories I wrote on the impact on agriculture of the just-emerging trend of global warming and of biotechnology, when it offered the radical promise of herbicide-resistant or medicinal crops and cloned animals.

The Charles Shanley implosion comes to mind, as does the Agweek kickoff, when we all (including Jim Durkin, Mike Burbach, Juan Miguel Pedraza, Stephen

25TH ANNIVERSARY

Lee and I) piled into a white stretch limo in Grand Forks to celebrate the launch. I don’t remember the celebration, but I do remember the limo. I was thrilled by Agweek’s ambition to cover the Northern Plains like the stars and its philosophy of giving sophisticated markets and politics news to farmers.

They were heady times.

Juan and I were sent to Whistler, British Columbia, for international grain talks. We lingered after the talks ended and made off with briefing books and handwritten notes from the session. We also took in the Vancouver World’s Fair. Agweek sent me to grain talks in San Diego, where I first met the woman who ended up hiring me at Reuters, and to the Nebraska State Fair to interview Willie Nelson, on his bus, for a cover on the first Farm Aid concert.

We took seriously the role of global trade and macroeconomic trends, and tried to look through boosterism (an article on how Kent Jones and others in the state were taken in during the North Dakota potato scandal comes to mind). I enjoyed writing book reviews on topics such as the Soviet collectivization of Ukraine and subsequent famine (Harvest of Sorrow).

Fridays were a bear – I did the specialty crop markets and called around to the elevators every Friday.

Change came slowly to prices for edible beans, mustard seed, potatoes and buckwheat, but sometimes because of a natural disaster, big yields or food fads, they jumped or plunged.

It always was fun to check in with the elevator or warehouse operators each week and keep those mostly warm relationships going.

One time, I quoted an operator as using a mild epithet – prices were “too damn high” or “going to hell” and the elevator employee swore he’d never talk to me again. But I talked him down, and learned the value of a humble apology in source maintenance.

Juan Miguel Pedraza

■ Current address: Grand Forks, N.D. ■ Agweek career: 1985 to 1996.

■ Background: Age 61. Native of

Madrid, Spain. Grand Forks Herald newsroom clerk, editor’s assistant, 1983 to 1985; Grand Forks Herald ag reporter, Farm & Home/Agweek writer, 1985 to 1992; Agweek copy editor, 1992 to 1993; Agweek editor, 1993 to 1995; Agweek senior correspondent, 1995 to 1996.

■ Career since: PaineWebber, 1996 to 1997; KNOX farm director 1997 to Pedraza 1999; got a degree in international studies at UND in 1999; ran an international food aid consulting business for four years before joining the University of North Dakota Office of University Relations in 2004.

■ Best travel at Agweek: Agweek editor Jim Durkin sent me to cover General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks in Montreal and in Whistler, British Columbia; Mike Jacobs giving the OK for a trip to Europe in 1987 on a European Union journalists fellowship after Spain and Portugal joined the EU in 1986.

■ Favorite stories: Exposing abusive USDA practices against a Solway, Minn.-area wild rice farmer; working as part of an Agweek team that exposed PIKand-roll abuses; covering the building of two large warehouses in Grand Forks just to store corn from Iowa under a federal program and having our coverage read into the congressional record. Exclusive coverage of special biennial meetings of an elite group of ag economists – including former UND geography department chair Bill Dando, who watched develop-

ments in Soviet agriculture and predicting – based on those meetings – the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. I enjoyed covering anything to do with Big Iron.

My most surprising day at Agweek was shortly after I was named editor. The first order of business was to eliminate several positions.

Stephen J. Lee

■ Current address: Hatton, N.D. ■ Agweek career: June 1984 to Jan-

uary 1989.

■ Career since: I’ve worked at the Grand Forks Herald since 1989 as a reporter covering religion, crime, agriculture and general assignments.

■ Background: Native of Northwood, N.D., raised on a farm near Larimore, N.D.; lived in the Twin Cities most of the 1970s. Majored in history at Crown College in the Twin Cities Lee and in secondary education and graduate history and philosophy at UND. Mixed being a professional student with putting rubber tracks on caterpillars for Tonka Toys, wrestled drill pipe on the oil fields of North Dakota, plowed fields, waited tables and sold cigarettes and magazines. Will be a cowboy when I grow up.

■ Agweek memories: Agweek’s early, growing years were exciting and wild. I began when it was still “Farm and Home,” and one of my fond memories were the long Fridays as we set up the first tables of grain elevator prices for the week, averaging each crop prices by hand, with daily copies pasted together in a huge pastiche laid across desks in the pre-computer age. I’ll never forget listening to Juan Pedraza go from speaking Portuguese to a grain trader in Brazil to French with a contintental ag expert and, without pausing, go right into eloquent Canadian with a farmer in Saskatchewan, all in one afternoon on the telephone.

Kevin Grinde

■ Current address: East Grand Forks, Minn.

■ Agweek career: June 19, 1985, to April 1989.

■ Background: Age 54. Native of Hibbing, Minn., Bemidji (Minn.) State University grad in mass communications with degree awarded in 1984.

First job, Mesabi Daily News in Virginia, Minn. Then it was west to Grand Forks to copy edit a brand-new Grinde Agweek magazine.

■ Career since: Herald managing editor since 1998. Past lives: Reporter, outdoor editor, news editor.

■ Agweek memories: The day Knight Ridder showed up tell to the Agweek staff that a 13 percent profit margin wasn’t good enough to go national. I jumped ship to the Herald a month later.

Ed Maixner

■ Current address: Herndon, Va. ■ Agweek career: June 1985 to May 1988, staff

writer, except six months as news editor. I was part of the startup team for Agweek and got to share that challenge with an excellent cadre of people, headed

by Jim Durkin and Mike Burbach.

STAFFERS: See Page 26

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 25

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25TH ANNIVERSARY

PAGE 26 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

STAFFERS

Continued from Page 24

■ Background: Age 62. Native of New England, N.D.;

bachelor of arts degree, 1969, NDSU (Go Bison!). Master’s in Journalism, 1984 Ohio State University.

■ Career since: 1989 to 1992, Legislative assistant, to Rep. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and then to his U.S. Senate office, 1992 to 1995. Western States Foundation, 1995 to 1998. Farm Progress Companies, July 1998 to April 2003, capitol correspondent; 2003 – Kiplinger Washington Editors, editor of Kiplinger Agriculture Letter ■ Memorable moments at Agweek: A “moment” I recall well while at the Grand Forks Herald and Agweek that had nothing to do with Agweek. In the newsroom on the morning of Jan. 28, Maixner 1986, about six months into the start of Agweek, the Challenger space rocket exploded, killing its seven crew members. The worst event to be seen on national television until 9/11 came along.

An experience that I found very interesting and rewarding was my first regular column, “In Your Intere$t,” which focused on farm business management topics. I learned a lot myself about farm finances, drawing on ag vocational education teachers, ag loan officers, tax accountants and others. And I got to do a lot of personal thoughts and suggestions – even dropped in my uncle’s Tom & Jerry recipe at the end of my Christmas week column. Knight Ridder picked up the column for about a year.

Brad Dokken

■ Current address: Grand Forks.

■ Agweek career: November 1985 to July 1989.

■ Background: Age 49. Native of Roseau, Minn.

Graduate of Bemidji State University, Mass Communications with a minor in music, May 1984. July 1984 to November 1985, Wadena (Minn.) Pioneer Journal; 1989 to present: Grand Forks Herald.

■ Career since: I’ve worked various positions at the Herald, including copy editor in features and news and associate editor and staff writer for Northland Outdoors from its birth in 1993 until its sudden death in 1995. I am currently an outdoors writer, columnist and copy editor at the Herald.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: Dokken That’s a tough one. Most memorable, I guess, was just the opportunity to work with and learn from some great mentors, including Jim Durkin, Mike Burbach and Andre Stephenson.

Agweek was “on the grow” in those days, and there was always a lot of energy our little part of the world across the alley. The annual summer “retreats” at Ken and Carrie Kleven’s cabin on Union Lake near Erskine, Minn., were always memorable, as well. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the job reviews with Andre Stephenson, which always occurred over a pitcher at Grigg’s Landing (after hours, of course).

Perhaps the most memorable Agweek edition I worked on was the dreaded farm bill section that coincided with the signing of the farm bill in late 1985 or early 1986. There was much planning and gnashing of teeth over that edition and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when it went to press.

While I grew up in the country, I didn’t come from a farm background and my time at Agweek was invaluable in helping me hone my editing skills. It also helped me grasp the importance of farm policy to the

outdoors. The Conservation Reserve Program is a classic example, and as a result, the past 15 years or so have been the “good, old days” for pheasant and waterfowl hunters.

Ann Bailey

■ Current address: Larimore, N.D. ■ Agweek career: A total of about 10 years. Stints

and market information our readers relied on each week. Congratulations Agweek on 25 years – you’ve aged well!

Rona K. Johnson

■ Current address: Grand Forks.

■ Agweek career: 1991 to 1999.

■ Background: Native of Edinburg, N.D. University

began in 1987 and ended in 2005.

■ Background: Age 51. Native of Larimore, N.D. University of Minnesota-Crookston 1979, associate degree in animal science; UND, 1983, bachelor’s degree in English. Grand Forks Herald/Agweek 1983 to 1996. Farm and Ranch Guide 1996 to 1998. Stay-at-home mom 1998 to 2000 Agweek 2000 to 2005. Grand Forks Herald 2006 to current.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: Covering the story of a thoroughbred Bailey horse named Heart that appeared at the Belmont Horse Fair during the Belmont Stakes in 1990. I got to go to the Horse Fair and to the Belmont Stakes in New York. Favorite stories involve doing features on farmers and writing information that is useful to them.

My most surprising day at Agweek was when photographer Eric Hylden and I were out in southwestern North Dakota doing a story on an elderly man who ran a bed and breakfast and he told us the jelly we had just had with our toast was made 25 years ago by his wife, now deceased.

of North Dakota, political science, 1991. 1999 to 2006 Grand Forks Herald. 2006 to present, BBI International.

■ Career since: BBI International where I’ve held a few positions including features editor for Ethanol Producer Magazine, Biodiesel Magazine and Distillers Grains Quarterly to my current position as editor of Biomass Magazine. As the editor of Biomass Magazine I also assist with conference planning and executing.

Johnson BBI currently has four biomass conferences: International Biomass Conference & Expo; Pacific West Biomass Conference & Expo; Northeast Biomass Conference & Expo and Southeast Biomass Conference & Expo.

Memorable moments at Agweek: Nothing tops the flood stories of 1997, driving to Aberdeen, S.D., every week to produce the magazine and eventually working out of a construction trailer behind the Manvel Public School.

■ Current address: Grand Forks, N.D. ■ Agweek career: Staff writer, 1989

October 2008, copy editor.

■ Background: Native of Rochester, Minn. Bemidji State University business finance, 1990.

■ Career since: Stay-at-home mom to 4-year-olds Lexi and Nicholas.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: Delivering Agweek copies to readers during the 1997 flood, visiting with readers while manning the Agweek Schneider booth at farm shows, riding in a beet truck with former Agweek ad sales representative LoAnn Stadstad while she worked the annual sugar beet harvest.

Jonathan Knutson

Knutson is a lot of fun.

to 1991; April 2010 to present ■ Background: Grew on a diversified family farm in central North Dakota. Have worked at newspapers in North Dakota. Worked at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, covering mainly business and agriculture from 2001 to March 2010, before returning to Agweek.

■ Most memorable moment at Agweek: Coming back after 19 years.

Covering agriculture full time again

Becky (Bothun) Funston

■ Current Address: Boise, Idaho ■ Agweek career: August 1989 to May 1991, copy edi-

tor.

■ Background: East Grand Forks, Minn., native.

University of North Dakota, news/editorial, 1988. East Grand Forks Exponent 1982 to 1988; Arabian Horse Times, Waseca, Minn., 1989.

■ Career since: Left Agweek to marry and moved to Washington state. My experience obtained from Agweek opened the door to great opportunities in public relations. While in Washington, I worked for an advertising, public relations and association management firm that focused on sports marketing in the summers and agricultural marketing in the winters.

February 1998 my husband’s career moved us to Boise and I continued a career in public relations and special events. Retired from full-time employment in 2000 and currently work part time for a special events firm in Boise when needed.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: As a copy editor, I didn’t get out of the office much. One opportunity I relished each and every year was the Winter Shows in Crookston, Minn. Listening and talking to farmers who visited the Agweek booth provided a great avenue to gauge how the magazine was doing and what features

Kristine Schneider

■ Current address: Grand Forks.

■ Agweek career: February 1992 to

Julie Copeland

■ Current address: Santa Cruz, Calif.

■ Agweek career: 1993 to 1996.

■ Background: Age 45. Native of Cando, N.D. Uni-

versity of North Dakota, journalism, 1987; Walsh County Record, editor, 1987 to 1993; North Dakota State University, director of special publications in the Office of the President/University Relations, 1993; Grand Forks Herald, 1993 to 1999; The Californian, city editor, Salinas, Calif., 1999 to 2000; Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, city editor, 2000 to current.

■ Career since: Continued in journalism at daily newspapers since leaving Agweek. Most memorable event since leaving Agweek was being on a panel discussion at the Monterey Peninsula College with Carl Bernstein.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: Having grown up on a farm outside Cando, N.D., Agweek was a great fit for me. My most memorable moments were attending farm shows and hearing from readers who called Agweek their “bible.” I always say Agweek was the best job I’ve ever had. I learned so much more about agriculture and finance from my colleagues and readers and was able to continue in agriculture, although not STAFFERS: See Page 27

STAFFERS

25TH ANNIVERSARY

Continued from Page 26

on a tractor or a combine as I’d done growing up. Agweek was my first internship while attending UND. It was during Agweek’s heyday and was an amazing experience. I loved calling elevators for grain prices and enjoyed the conversation with farmers. When I had the opportunity to return to Agweek as editor, it was a great experience that will remain with me for a lifetime. I learned much of what I know and appreciate about how newspaper presses work from my time at Agweek, given our zoned publications and color capabilities with advertisers. And I’ll never forget Knight Ridder’s push to make Agweek its first business-to-business online publication. It was a tremendous learning experience and one that readers enjoy today. I miss farming, North Dakota and the people that make it the great state it is.

Jayson Menke

I Current address: Grand Forks.

I Agweek career:

Fall 1994 to spring 2000, intern, staff writer,ad sales.

I Background: Age 38. Native of Neche, N.D. University of North Dakota, public relations and sociology, 1989 to 1995.

Menke I Career since: Spring 2000 to current, real estate broker, Botsford & Qualey Land Co.; ag stock specialist, Alerus Securities; farm manager, Alerus Financial.

I Memorable moments at Agweek: My first and only barley tour. Unfortunately, the tour mellowed out by the mid-’90s, but appreciated all of the free samples they sent home with me. Favorite stories were an Agweek cover story about the cattle cycle and story about neighbors near Warsaw, N.D., helping the Nice family with harvest (my first front-page Herald story).

Lori Weber Menke

I Current address: Grand Forks.

I Agweek career: November 1996 to

November 1999.

I Background: Native of Calio, N.D. Went to elementary and high school in Munich, N.D. Attended the University of North Dakota, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. Have Weber Menke been employed as an imaging technician at the Grand Forks Herald since November 1999. Married Jayson Menke in 1999, and together we have two boys, Riley (8) and Parker (6).

I Memorable moments at Agweek: I

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 27

suppose the correct answer should be meeting my husband. But on top of the list probably would be the flood of 1997 and driving with Rona Johnson and Kim Deats every week to Aberdeen after the flood to produce Agweek.

Kim Deats

I Current address: Grand Forks.

I Agweek career: November 1996 to

current – currently editor.

I Background: Native of Chico, Calif.

Graduate of Grand Forks Central High School. University of North Dakota, criminal justice major.

I Memorable moments at Agweek: Memory I’ll never forget – trying to publish Agweek during the flood. This was three- to four-day trips to Aberdeen with Rona Johnson (Lori Weber joined us after the first one or two trips) and trying to learn someone else’s computer system/wire service as I hopped around the Aberdeen American-News’ newsroom desks as a reporter or editor would come and go. It was frustrating, but ultimately rewarding to see that first post-flood issue of Agweek. It was only maybe six pages, but we worked just as hard on it as we had on any before – or since. Other favorite memory is working on a series of first-person, “day in the life”-type stories. Mine task was to pull spring calves at a Sharon, N.D.-area ranch. I ended up going twice because Mother Nature decides when calves are coming, not the editor. I never did pull a calf, but I rounded up the herd, bottle-fed twin calves, gave inoculations, tagged some ears, rode a horse to move round up some strays – probably the most fun I’ve had on the job to date. Other big things: Move to pagination was one of the reasons I was sent to Agweek after years of copy editing for the Herald, and we’d just been doing it for a few months when the flood hit. It’s also been interesting to see the growth of online and social media elements and to figure out their best uses for Agweek and its readers.

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Kevin Bonham

I Current address: Grand Forks.

I Agweek career:

Aug. 28, 1998, to Dec. 30, 2001, staff writer, then editor.

I Background: Age 58. Native of Mandan, N.D. Dickinson State University, history, 1973. 1973 to1974, Wahpeton (N.D.) Daily News; 1974 to 1984, Bonham Chambersburg (Pa.) Public Opinion; 1984 to 2000, Grand Forks Herald and Agweek; 2001 to 2004, Northern Plains Potato Grower Magazine; 2004 to 2006, freelance writing; Grand Forks Herald, 2006 to present.

IFavorite stories: In 1999, Agweek and the Grand Forks Herald teamed up with several Knight Ridder newspapers STAFFERS: See Page 28

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25TH ANNIVERSARY

PAGE 28 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

STAFFERS

visits across the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Canada’s prairie provinces.

■ My most surprising day at Agweek was early on my time there, when Knight Ridder fell into a management cutback situation. They let go the editor who hired me – Kevin Bonham, to whom I’ll always be grateful for believing that I could be a good fit at Agweek.

Continued from Page 27

throughout the Great Plains to research and produce a special project, Harvest of Risk, a four-month series of articles on the 1990s farm crisis, its causes and prospects, and how the small farm and rural economy might hang in the balance.

Jerry W. Kram

Mikkel Pates

■ Current address: Beulah, N.D. ■ Agweek career: October 2001 to

■ Current address: Fargo, N.D. ■ Agweek career: January 2000 to

January 2003.

■ Background: Age 50. Native of Edmore, N.D. B.A. Biology, Jamestown College, Prior newspaper experience, Devils Lake (N.D.) Journal, Minot (N.D.) Daily News, Bismarck Tribune.

■ Career since: After leaving Agweek, I worked for the North Dakota Public Employees Association and Kram then got back into writing working for ethanol and biodiesel trade journals published by BBI International. Just over a year ago, I became editor of the Beulah Beacon in western North Dakota.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: Going out with Jackie Lorentz to do a “day in the life of a farmer” story where I worked as a beekeeper. I was surprised at how hot the beekeeping suits became in the summer sun. I managed to get through the day unscathed, although Jackie was stung twice.

My favorite stories had to do with the science of agriculture, talking with researchers about the genetics of crops and the amazing techniques that had been

current, staff writer.

■ Background: Age 53. Native of Brookings, S.D. South Dakota State University, ag journalism, 1979. Worthington (Minn.) Daily Globe, 1979 to 1983, Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, 1983 to 1999.

■ Memorable moments at Agweek: I remember being stopped by the BorPates der Patrol at Sweetwater, Mont., when I went there to take a photo of an elevator that had been built after the grain importation protests in the mid-1980s. Bad luck to tell them I was working for Agweek, but I only had ID listing the Grand Forks Herald.

■ Favorite stories involve exposing situations farmers and ranchers must struggle with the elements, government policies or markets. The most elaborate travel assignments have been to Cuba, China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and France. On a day-to-day basis, I enjoy letting sun shine in on the inner workings or failings of farm programs. I’ve enjoyed my CropStop

developed to manipulate them, the biology and ecology of plant and animal diseases and pest and how they used that knowledge to control them, and also getting out to the regional extension meetings where the researchers and farmers met face-to-face to exchange ideas and observations I think my most memorable writing was when I was allowed to go to the West River region of North Dakota to report on drought damage in summer 2002. That series ran in the Herald, but I also used some of the articles in Agweek.

My most surprising day at Agweek was my last day there, when I was told that Agweek had met the financial targets set by Knight Ridder but the Herald had not, and therefore, I was being let go to “protect the core product.”

Kelly Stone

■ Current Address: Fargo, N.D. ■ Agweek career: January 2006 to March 2007 ■ Background: Native of Nora

Springs Iowa, B.S. Mass Communications Bemidji State University, WDAY-AM radio 1997 to 1998, WDAY/WDAZ-TV 1998 to 2005, (then Agweek), KMJO-FM and KFGO-AM 2007-2009. Currently fund raising/media relations coordinator, Family HealthCare Center, Fargo.

■ Memorable Agweek moments: Combining record attempt in Winkler Stone Manitoba, series on 4-H livestock competitions at county fairs, visiting a hemp field north of Winnipeg, in-depth conversation/interview with Minnesota Ag Commissioner Gene STAFFERS: See Page 29

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“You have to go with what management says,” LeTexier says. “We just decided we’d be the best we could be in the four states we were going to concentrate on. I think we were successful at it. I know that talking to the farmers at the farm shows . . . well, they just loved their Agweek. And they let us know if they weren’t getting it.”

Surviving the flood

When the great flood of 1997 hit, Agweek almost ended, LeTexier recalls.

Grand Forks Herald operations moved to Manvel, N.D. LeTexier’s Trinity Lutheran became a refugee center, with staffers sleeping in the pews. The church installed showers – one for the men, one for the women.

While Herald operations were the most urgent, Agweek shifted advertising operations to its Fargo office. Editorial people first went to a sister publication, the Aberdeen (S.D.) American News. Editor Rona Johnson and Kim Deats were among those who kept things together.

“There was talk that they might shut Agweek down, or that we couldn’t handle it right then,” LeTexier recalls. “But we were able to stay alive by going out and taking the initiative. Obviously, it’s still here. The drought was hard, but the flood was more threatening to Agweek than anything else that’s happened.”

LeTexier retired from Agweek in 2001. He’d had some heart trouble and decided to cut down his stress level to avoid early heart deaths that had run in his family. His staff gave him a picture of Jesus, holding a lamb, and the caption: “Rejoice, I have found my sheep, which was lost.” – Luke, 15:6.

“It touched my soul,” he says.

Since 2001, Agweek has had other advertising directors – Mark Steinke,

STAFFERS

Continued from Page 28

Hugoson. And of course, my weeklong tour of German farms, a vintner and the Klaas equipment plant.

Amanda Hillier

■ Current address: Fargo.

■ Agweek career: June 2008 to August

2008, summer internship.

■ Background: Age 21. Native of Hensel, N.D. North Dakota State University Journalism, Public Relations, & Natural Resources Management (Environmental Communication). I should graduate in December 2011. Was editor of my high school paper, The Tornado Breezes, in Cavalier, N.D. Worked as a reporter for NDSU’s The Spectrum newspaper from 2007 to 2009.

Jason Melin and now Linda Lande.

Back to the Bible

In his entire 13 years with Agweek, LeTexier and his wife, Diana, had lived in Manvel – about 10 miles north of Grand Forks.

When he came out of alcohol treatment, nearly 30 years ago, he started speaking in churches, studying for the ministry and taking online courses. Pastors at Trinity Lutheran Church in Manvel helped him.

“They trained me and sent me out,” he says.

Trinity in 1987 had affiliated with the American Association of Lutheran Churches, a group out of a large merger that became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

While in his Agweek role, LeTexier was low-key about church work. He deliberately kept his public life and his spiritual life separate.

“People didn’t know it then, but most weekends I was serving a church somewhere,” LeTexier says, listing churches in Grand Forks, Poplar Lake, Minn., Alvarado, Minn., Mekinock, N.D., and rural Park River, N.D. “I did a lot of filling in at places that didn’t have a pastor or couldn’t get one.”

LeTexier believes God saved him from alcohol and turned his life around.

“It was very powerful. I was changed in a moment’s time,” he says, adding, “I was ‘pastorized.’”

His family realized the source of his change.

His two oldest sons went into the professional ministry. John is a missionary overseas. Joseph is a professor in a Bible college and seminary at Columbia (S.C.) International University. He has seven children, and all but the youngest saw him in his alcohol yearsand know what happened.

■ Career since: I have worked for the The Walsh County Press in Park River, N.D., writing freelance articles since November 2008 and had a summer internship with them in 2009. I currently work as the NDSU Memorial Union Art Gallery public relations coordinator and at Petco in Fargo.

■ Memorable moHillier ments at Agweek: One of my most memorable moments at Agweek was when my emu oil story was used as the front page story of Agweek and then later was published in the Grand Forks Herald. It was a big step for me and I am really proud of that story, my first major frontpage article.

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 29

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Ag businesses have seen a lot of changes

PAGE 30 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK

By Jonathan Knutson Agweek Staff Writer

Agweek was launched 25 years ago to help area farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses keep on top of the ongoing changes and developments in agriculture. In that time, countless changes – some great, some small – have come in everything from U.S. farm policy to the crops grown in the region.

Not everything has changed over the past quarter century.

Agweek continues to provide information that ag producers and businesses want and need.

Farmers and ranchers continue to look for ways to operate smarter and more profitably.

Agribusinesses continue to search for new and better ways of serving their customers. For some companies, that’s meant adding new locations or new services and products or both. For virtually all area ag businesses, it’s meant adopting new technologies to become more efficient.

Here’s a look at six area agribusinesses that are longtime Agweek advertisers.

An anniversary of their own

You might know Faith, S.D., as the place where Sue, a 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, was discovered 20 years ago.

But to the people who live there, Faith and the surrounding area are cattle and sheep country – and that’s where Faith Livestock comes in.

The business, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in August, sells cattle and sheep raised by ranchers living within 100 to 150 miles of Faith, says Scott Vance, one of the proprietors of the family business.

His father, Gary, also works at the business. It was Gary’s father, Lawrence, who’s now deceased, who helped start the business in 1960.

Early on at the business, “they weighed more cattle than they sold. It took a little while to build up trust,” Scott Vance says.

Today, the business is entrenched in the community, he says, noting that many of its 30 to 35 part-time employees also raise sheep and cattle and are customers of Faith Livestock.

The business has five full-time employees, too.

Cattle account for about two-thirds of Faith Livestock’s sales, sheep about one-third, Vance estimates.

October is the biggest sales month, particularly for cattle, Business wasn’t the best a year ago, when low cattle prices and poor calving conditions hurt area livestock producers, Vance says.

But better prices and excellent calving conditions this spring are making 2010 a good year, he says.

25TH ANNIVERSARY

3 generations, 5 ag stores

William Roy started selling farm equipment in Langdon, N.D., in 1971.

Today, three generations of his family are selling John Deere equipment at dealerships in Langdon and four other North Dakota communities.

William’s son, Kevin, and Kevin’s son, Anthony, also are active in the family business.

Besides the Langdon store, they also operate these dealerships: ■ Roy Implement in Walhalla.

■ Cavalier Implement in Cavalier.

■ Cooper Implement in Cooperstown.

■ Barnes County Equipment in Wimbledon.

Combined, the five stores employ about 90 to 100 people and sell a wide range of equipment for crops and hay.

Kevin Roy says operating multiple locations makes financial sense because “costs are cut. You share the costs in a lot of things” such as computers.

Agriculture has seen many changes since the Langdon business began, he says.

Farms have gotten bigger, and so has the equipment, Roy says, and equipment will continue to get bigger, although infrastructure such as roads and power lines will limit how big equipment ultimately can become.

Ag and farm equipment sales fared well from 2006 to 2009 when commodity prices shot higher, he says. Now, with commodity prices lower again, ag equipment sales are back to normal.

Fundamental things apply

Technology has changed greatly in the past 73 years, but the basics of the auction business remain the same, says Larry Schnell, co-owner of Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, N.D. “Competitive bidding still has value.

That hasn’t changed,” he says.

The business was founded by Ray Schnell in 1937 as Schnell’s Livestock Exchange Sales Co. It took its current name in 1977.

The heart of the business is selling feeder cattle to feedlots, most of them in states far from Dickinson in western North Dakota.

Eighty-five percent of the feeder cattle sold by Stockmen’s end up in faraway feedlots, Schnell says.

From October through February, when Stockmen’s is busiest, the business holds two sales weekly for feeder cattle, he says.

According to Schnell, Stockmen’s, which has 11 full- and 35 part-time employees, sells about 8 percent of its cattle through satellite video. That percentage has been holding steady.

Technology allows Stockmen’s to be more efficient in “things like weighing cattle,” he says, but technology isn’t the only thing that’s changing. Big ranchers are getting bigger and small ones grow

smaller, he says.

Business, good in 2009 despite generally poor cattle prices, is even better this year, Schnell says. This summer is even more appealing because the grass in southwestern North Dakota is unusually green and thick.

“It’s lush,” he says.

Schnell is optimistic about the future of his industry.

“I think people are still seeing the benefits of competitive bidding,” he says.

Still trucking onward

Bert’s Truck Equipment has been selling its wares to area farmers and others since 1939.

The family business, which Bert Gregoire launched in downtown East Grand Forks, Minn., today has locations in East Grand Forks and Moorhead, Minn.

The product lines include equipment for farmers, contractors and others, and recently expanded to include accessibility equipment for people with limited mobility.

“We have a pretty wide range of products,” says Jeremy Gregoire, general manager for the Moorhead location.

The two locations cooperate on a few things but generally operate independently, despite having the same name, he says.

Each location has it own website.

The East Grand Forks location has 18 full-time employees and the Moorhead site 32, according to store websites.

The stores’ trade area extends west to Dickinson, N.D., east to Bemidji, Minn., south to Sioux Falls, S.D., and north to the Canadian border, Gregoire says.

Bert’s is independent, which is a big plus, Gregoire says.

“We like the flexibility,” he says.

The East Grand Forks location moved to its current site, east of the American Crystal Sugar Beet plant, in 1958. After a major fire struck the East Grand Forks Bert’s building in 1989, a new 14,500-square-foot building was completed in 1990. A new welding shop was constructed in 1995.

The Moorhead location, now on U.S. Highway 75 north of the city, opened in 1976.

In 2004, a 10,000-square-foot addition was put on to the shop, with another 3,000 square feet of showroom and office space added, too.

Tools are its business

Acme Tools has deep roots in the Upper Midwest – and in agriculture.

The Grand Forks, N.D.-based company supplies tools and equipment at nine locations in three states, online and through its catalog.

Contractors are the company’s biggest customers, and woodworkers and do-ityourselfers are important, too, says

Chris Van Sickle, an Acme Tools official in Grand Forks.

Whoever the customer, service is essential, Van Sickle says.

“Service is our main goal,” he says.

George Kuhlman founded the business, originally known as Acme Electric, in 1948 in downtown Grand Forks as an electric motor repair shop.

He took the Acme name because it means the highest level attainable, or the peak of perfection.

Some customers still refer to the business as Acme Electric, though its name has changed to Acme Tools.

The company remains a family business, Van Sickle says.

“That’s who we are,” he says.

The nine locations are Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, all in North Dakota; Bemidji, Duluth and Plymouth, all in Minnesota; Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, both in Iowa.

Agriculture is vital to all the communities served by Acme Tools, Van Sickle says.

For about a decade, beginning in 1999, the company focused on establishing new retail locations in Minnesota and Iowa.

Now, the emphasis has shifted, Van Sickle says, and the company has no plans for more retail stores because “we’re focusing on our Internet business.”

He says catalog sales also are important to the company and that customers can request a catalog at www.acmetools.com.

25 years of truck sales

Kurt Wanner describes himself as a “hands-on owner” who regularly gets out from behind his desk to work on a truck or whatever else needs to be done.

Wanner owns and operates Dickinson Truck Equipment, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this spring.

He started the business after working in the Dickinson area for a similar business based in Rapid City, S.D. The North Dakota native thought it made more sense to have his own business in Dickinson than to make frequent trips there from Rapid City.

The early years of his business were challenging because the region’s oil patch, a major truck customer, was struggling, he says.

“But we struck with it,” he says, and within 10 years, the business was faring much better.

Today, Dickinson Truck Equipment Co. has 10 employees.

Wanner says that while the commercial side of his business, which includes the oil patch as well as contractors, accounts for the biggest chunk of sales, farm sales are important, too.

AGWEEK / Monday, August 2, 2010 – PAGE 31

CONGRATULATIONS AGWEEK ON YOUR 25TH ANNIVERSARY! Like you, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers has a long history of serving the agricultural community. We’ve been conducting unreserved public auctions since 1958 – and now conduct over 175 agricultural auctions per year, helping thousands of people buy and sell their farmland and equipment quickly, easily and effectively.

When the ag community needs an auction, they come to us - when we need to reach the ag community, we come to you.

Congratulations - here’s to another successful 25 years!

NEXT AUCTION Minneapolis, MN – September 28

1.800.242.8116 | rbauction.com/agriculture

PAGE 32 – Monday, August 2, 2010 / AGWEEK