Spring 2022 Newsletter
Mar 31, 2022
A Message from President/CEO, Allan Zumpfe
2021 will go down in the record books for a lot of things – one could be for the greatest number of times we’ve said, “we’ve seen this before.” We have experienced record low unemployment and off-the-charts fertilizer and chemical prices to the collapse of our supply chain and sky-rocketing inflation. During this unprecedented period in history, I am proud to say your cooperative navigated through it all very well. Your cooperative handled record volumes of grain, fertilizer, and energy products and delivered record profits in doing so.
At our annual meeting held on January 11th in DeWitt, Nebraska, we reported the fiscal 20/21 year-end results. Total sales of $1.116 billion generated local savings of $20.7 million and net savings of $22.5 million. At the direction of your board of directors, patronage of $10.36 million ($5.18 million of cash and $5.18 million of qualified equity) were allocated to our member owners. Along with the patronage distribution, the last half of 2010 and the first 50% of the 2011 equity has been revolved, as well as age 65 equity totaling $5.0 million. All total, a little over $10.18 million in cash was sent to you, our member owners. These results are only possible with an employee group that comes to work every day and works hard for our owners, living our company mission: Investing our Owners’ Success; delivering service and solutions to exceed customer expectations. So, when you see them, please thank them and recognize them for a job well done!
As we move froward to what we can only imagine lies ahead of us for the balance of 2022, we continue to look for ways to become more efficient by investing in assets that will address speed and space issues, as well as the shortage of our most valued asset: labor. With an unemployment rate of 2.2% and 2.6% in Nebraska and Kansas, respectively, finding qualified labor that is willing to do the work that needs to be done is a challenge. One solution we have used the last couple of years and will use again this year is the H2A program. 26 workers from South Africa will be working for us the next 9-10 months. While we know this is not a viable long-term solution, these workers will provide the much-needed help to serve our customers during our peak spring and fall seasons.
With COVID hopefully in our rear-view mirror, we continue to try to manage through the supply chain disruption issues we are all facing. This is impacting every facet of our business as well as yours. From fertilizers and chemicals to equipment, vehicles, and building materials, just-in-time inventory has taken on a new meaning. Items that once took days to get now are taking multiple months. I am very proud of our agronomy group as they have positioned Farmers Cooperative to be able to take care of your needs this spring in almost all products. Liberty is still a challenge, but Jeff continues to work hard to get enough product on the floor to take care of our customer’s needs.
We are again adding to our grain storage and handling footprint with capital expenditures in fiscal 2021/2022. One of the main projects we are working on is a greenfield site located near Barnes, Kansas, consisting of 2 – 820,000 bushel concrete tanks and 20k bu/hr receiving legs. When completed, this site will serve producers in the Waterville area as we have continued to take storage space and handling equipment out of service at that location as they have been deemed unsafe. A 2.0-million-bushel Macon building will be constructed in Exeter to serve that area, as well as alleviate some pressure from the McCool Junction and Cordova areas. The agronomy group is adding on to the chemical buildings in Exeter and Odell, as well as adding three flex dry machines and three row crop machines to our fleet of application equipment. The energy, feed, and transport divisions are also upgrading and adding to their fleet of service trucks and semis to better serve our customers again this year.
In closing, I want to thank you for your business and support. Farmers Cooperative is here for you, and we look forward to serving you again during 2022.
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