FUOSV Agronomy Annual Report

The Fairmount Agronomy team consists of 20 employees whom faced many challenges and successes this past year.  The agronomy manager Brad VanOverbeke and secretary Bev Kubela keep everything flowing nicely between our office and our growers, out in the field our operators consist of Rich Adolf, Jim Burlison, Eric Green, Jerry Born, Todd Theede, Tom Mobraten, Travis Dejong, Bruce Danielson, Brian Wettstein, Gary Rugenstein and Kole Mikesh, while Chad Swanson and Doug Gutzmer operate the Tri-State Fertilizer Terminal during the busy season.  Our agronomy sales team hits the country with Jon Nelk, Kris Anderson, and Kelsey Steenblock out of the Fairmount branch.  The Breckenridge Agronomy Center is managed by Austin Holtz and is teamed up with Mike Manson, the agronomist.

2006 was a challenging and successful year for our team.  The weather conditions went from one extreme to the other, starting off as a wet spring, turning to drought conditions during the summer and then getting a little more moisture after harvest.  The wet conditions presented a problem for a short time preventing us from getting into the fields to spray in a timely manner, but also allowed us to really value the performance of some of our products; Valor, Steadfast and Confidence were perfect examples of this.  They were all very effective pre-plant/pre-emerge herbicides this year.  Because we were not able to get in some of the fields for the first shot of Round Up as early as we would have liked, these preplant herbicides did a great job controlling the weeds until we could get in the field to spray.  Another challenge we were presented with was the soybean aphid problem this last summer.  It was by far the worst year for this area to experience aphids, but again with the performance of our insecticide products we were able to get great control of the situation.  In a way, it presented a great opportunity for us to spray quite a few more acres too.  As for deepbanding and wrapping up the season, we were faced with a few rain/snow showers which held us up briefly, but other than that we really couldn’t have asked for better conditions which allowed us to deepband over 60,000 acres.  Now as the winter comes, our operators are now faced with a new challenge of building bottom hopper conveyor trailers along with many other tasks including cleaning and performing maintenance on our equipment to prepare for next year.  Meanwhile, our sales team is hitting the country again to follow up on our agronomy performance efforts this last year and seek out new business for the next year.

All in all, 2006 was a successful year, yet full of many learning experiences.  For the amount of acres that we cover, it’s always amazing how smooth everything runs.  A lot of the credit goes to the preparation and organizational efforts between our team and the growers who are the heart and soul of the company.  A great amount of thought and effort goes into each of the tasks that our agronomy department performs for the growers, no matter how big or small the task.  Each individual has their contribution of efforts to our performance as a whole, but it has really been a team effort that has allowed our department to perform efficiently and to the highest level of expectation.