Big ideas and the big ag co-op
It’s not just the executives of Landus Cooperative who have imaginations about what their company should be doing. The columnist has also given them ideas.
JEFFERSON, Iowa – While we’re all trying to sort out what kind of financial trouble Landus Cooperative might be in – firing 10 percent of your workforce last week is a pretty strong indicator, right? – let me share some tales that help you understand why I’ve long been interested in this huge company.
Now based in Des Moines, Landus is Iowa’s largest ag co-op. But as I explained in my story last week, it grew from roots in the tiny town of Ralston, along the border between Greene and Carroll Counties here in west central Iowa.
One of Chuck Offenburger’s big ideas for the predecessor company of Landus Cooperative involved turning these shuttered, historic grain elevators in Jefferson — right between the Raccoon River Valley Trail and the Greene County Fairgrounds — into a huge art installation featuring the work of the renowned art company “Sticks” of Des Moines. He explains later in this column.
I started paying attention in the mid-1970s, Landus’ predecessor company had its gondola grain cars painted pink to make them easier to re-locate from the huge “grain trains” the co-op was using to ship nationwide to processors.
By the ’90s, West Central Cooperative, as the company had re-branded itself, was known nationally as one of the most innovative in the business. In 1999 and 2000, I was serving on Gov. Tom Vilsack’s “Strategic Planning Council,” 37 of us who were asked to come up with a vision of what Iowa could be like by the year 2010 and an action plan of how to get there. When we wanted to know how to build “value-added agriculture” in the state, three of our primary consultants were West Central executives Wayne Seaman, Tom Feldman and Jeff Stroburg.
By the summer of 2004, I had followed one of my dreams of living in the Iowa countryside by moving to an acreage just outside the unincorporated village of Cooper here in Greene County. In late winter, a new community-club-like organization, the “Committee for a Super Cooper,” had been organized. A bunch of us were painting the interior walls of the old school gymnasium in town, preparing for a “Cooper Prom” we were going to start having for all ages.
As a newcomer, I introduced myself to the fellow painting next to me, Tim Ely.
“What do you do – when you’re not painting old gymnasiums?” I asked.
“I’m a petro-chemist,” Ely said. “I work for West Central Co-op.”
He explained he grew up here, spent a big chunk of his career in the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, but an opportunity back home and made the move.
What had made that possible was West Central’s early move into “bio-fuels,” specifically “bio-diesel” made from soybeans. Bio-diesel and ethanol seems to be creating a bright new future for agriculture. And I’d just met proof that there’d been opportunities – even in small Iowa towns – for well-paid engineers, scientists and even a few “petro-chemists” in this emerging industry. I was excited!
West Central had named its new subsidiary “Renewable Energy Group,” or “REG.”
In the fall of 2005, Nile Ramsbottom, who was the executive vice-president of REG, ran for City Council here in Jefferson. I was even more excited. There’d been some speculation that if this bio-fuels business was as hot as it was said to be, REG might be moving on from little Ralston, even though they’d built their refinery there. We were hearing that except for one petro-chemist, the other well-paid bio-fuels engineers and scientists wanted to live in bigger places with brighter lights.
But my political sense was, hey, if REG’s executive vice-president would be elected to the Jefferson City Council for a four-year term, maybe that’d be a sign that the company would stay, at least in Jefferson if not Ralston.
Alas, Ramsbottom got beat – actually by a good friend of mine, Gary VonAhsen, who turned out to be an excellent member of the City Council for at least a decade. (I always wondered if Nile Ramsbottom’s last name was a political liability, especially in a community where our high school sports teams are nicknamed the “Rams.” And he was “Ramsbottom.”)
I realize that many of you with more sense are laughing now at my political theory. But, as fate would have it in 2006, West Central execs announced that they were considering re-locating the executive and sales offices, as well as the labs, probably to Ames – a much bigger community with Iowa State University’s location there adding allure.
I refused to concede. I had just read that another friend of mine, Joe Crookham, CEO of the iconic Musco Lighting in his hometown of Oskaloosa, had been tempted to move his fast-growing company to a larger city. Osky community leaders made an appeal to Crookham, who found a way to stay at home – by building a huge new headquarters on the southwest corner of the square, replacing most of a block of old, dilapidated buildings. And to keep his young, techno-savvy workforce happy, he even built a fine coffeehouse with a walk-thru to a fine bookstore, just up the street.
I asked Crookham if he was happy he’d made that decision, he said he absolutely was. I filled him in about West Central Cooperative, REG and how they were considering a move to Ames. I asked him if he’d come to Jefferson and Ralston, talk to the co-op’s leaders and community leaders, and help them understand the benefits of keeping REG in Jefferson – downtown, on our square. Crookham said he’d be happy to make the trip and help me make the argument.
So, I started rounding up endorsements from a few community leaders, made calls to West Central’s Stroburg and REG’s Ramsbottom, and asked for them to give us a hearing.
They thanked me for my concern, and for the idea, but then told me they were already committed to Ames. In 2007, REG made the move.
Maybe it turned out O.K. that way.
As I noted in last week’s story, in June of 2022 the huge American energy company Chevron bought REG for a reported $3.15 billion. Last March, Chevron announced it was closing the biodiesel plant in Ralston because of “unfavorable market conditions.” The plan is still shuttered and, local word is, much of the refining equipment has been removed.
If in Jefferson right now, we were sitting with a vacated REG corporate headquarters on a whole block just off the courthouse square, I’d probably be regarded as a real Rams’ bottom.
Can you handle the story of one more old project I tried to promote to the co-op?
Drive, walk or ride a bicycle about five blocks east of the square in Jefferson, using East Lincoln Way. You’ll come to the trailhead of the Raccoon River Valley Trail, with the historic and restored Milwaukee Railroad depot on the west side of the trail. On the east side of the trail, attached, are two historic and now-empty grain elevators. Right in front of the grain elevators is a recently-placed “Freedom Rock,” provided by the generosity of local veterans and painted by the noted Iowa Freedom Rock artist Ray “Bubba” Sorensen, of Greenfield.
The grain elevators, one bult in 1935 and the other in 1950, were among 14 elevators once owned by “Milligan Bros.,” a privately-owned company based in Jefferson that operated in Greene County and just beyond. The older of the elevator structures, 40 feet tall, is made of wood planks and steel sheeting. The concrete elevator is 110 feet tall. Together they could hold about 130,000 bushels of grain.
The predecessor company of West Central Co-op bought Milligan Bros. in 1977. From the year 2000 to about 2012, West Central used the old elevators for intake and storage of non-GMO or organic crops. But as farm equipment kept getting bigger, including semi-trailer trucks used by farmers to deliver grain, the old elevators became less useful for West Central.
In that time period, I talked once or twice to CEO Stroburg about how the company ought to turn the old elevators into artwork, there adjacent to the trail and fairgrounds. Hire artists, I told him, and have them portray the story of agriculture on the big buildings. “Maybe we should have them paint the history of bicycling instead,” he once said in return. We were both half-kidding.
It was in about 2013 or early 2014 when I heard that West Central was going to cease using these old elevators for grain intake. The company was considering tearing them down, grooming the ground into a park, and gifting it to the city government, the county government or perhaps the county fair.
At that same time, the local Habitat for Humanity organization had involved a bunch of us in a Christmas-season fundraiser, with a local talent show, also a public display of the favorite Nativity sets of local residents, a soup supper and an auction of homemade pies.
In the first year of that festival, we learned that the well-known Des Moines artist Sarah Grant, founder and original artist of the art and furniture company “Sticks,” had a special place in her heart for Nativity sets. Her first art commission, it turned out, had been about 30 years earlier for a large-scale Nativity scene. It included a dozen pieces, done in the colorful, pop-art-like style she developed for “Sticks.” We also learned that the company was still making and selling duplicates of the same Nativity set that Grant had made famous.
Our committee decided to buy one of “Sticks” Nativities – paying $890 – and then auction it off as part of our Habitat for Humanity Christmas fundraiser. In addition, we talked Grant into coming to Jefferson on a Sunday late-afternoon, a week before the fundraiser, to talk to the public about her art. She said she’d be glad to come to Jefferson and talk about it – IF I would do a public interview of her instead of asking her to make a speech.
We held that event Dec. 7, 2014, in the boyhood home of American pollster the late George H. Gallup Jr. When the octagonal Gallup home had recently been restored, and opened for a time as a retreat center, “Sticks” had been commissioned to tell the Gallup story with their artists’ work, displayed throughout the house.
The winning bid that evening for the special Nativity scene was a $1,200 donation to our Habitat for Humanity group.
After that program, I took Grant to dinner and, in our conversation, asked if she and her company had ever considered doing large “public art” pieces in small towns. She said yes, they’d done a couple of such intallations and would consider more, if an idea was sufficiently interesting. I pulled out my cell phone and showed her photos of the historic grain elevators side-by-side in Jefferson. She seemed intrigued.
Another look at the historic grain elevators that might have become towering installations of “Sticks” art telling the stories of agriculture. (That’s the Greene County Freedom Rock at the left.)
In an exchange of letters and phone calls in the next few weeks, Grant turned the idea over to her daughter Rachel Eubank, then and now the president of “Sticks.” Their artists went to work on some ideas to tell the story of grain elevators, agriculture, life in rural America – in artwork that would be on, around and possibly even inside the old Milligan Bros. elevators in Jefferson.
They did preliminary drawings. The completed piece would feature very bright colors, some interpretive panels with stories carved and burned into them. Some sculptures. The whole thing would be lighted when completed. “Sticks” insisted on having local artists, craftsmen, contractors and students work with them, both as volunteers and paid participants.
The total cost of the project, we roughly estimated between $500,000 and $2 million – depending on how grand we wanted to make it. And that was if West Central Co-op could somehow be convinced to donate the grain elevators and property. We were pretty well assured that a major state grant would be possible.
As I recall, I made a brief pitch about this idea by phone or email to Jeff Stroburg, who then was running REG, and Milan Kucerak, who was succeeding Stroburg as CEO of West Central. One of them suggested I make a presentation to Chris Nation, who was the manager of the huge, modern-day West Central elevator in Jefferson, and to Alicia Clancy Heun, then West Central’s director of corporate communications and media relations.
And so, on a very cold Friday late-afternoon in February, 2015, I met Nation and Heun in the grain elevator’s office on the northeast corner of town. I talked them through the background of the project, explaining how “Sticks” had become interested and involved. I half-expected the two of them to laugh me out of the office.
Except they didn’t.
In fact, both seemed to like the whole whopper of an idea. They said they’d be happy to present it to the executive team and perhaps eventually to the West Central Co-op board of directors.
That launched a series of meetings over the next eight or nine months. Our core committee of proponents was co-chaired by Deb McGinn, a very active arts advocate in Jefferson, and me. We included representatives of city and county government; Nation and Heun; economic development officials, and others.
The high point of our deliberations was a meeting of the West Central executive team with Rachel Eubank and key artists of “Sticks,” held in Horticulture Hall on the campus of Iowa State U in Ames. That hall, its offices and meeting rooms are showcases of “Sticks” art. After our visitors saw all that, it was clear that everybody in the meeting had new clarity and enthusiasm for our “Sticks” elevators project in Jefferson.
What happened? Why are the historic elevators now locked up and unused, except as a stirring backdrop for the Freedom Rock?
It all got lost in the reality of the corporate merger in 2016 of West Central Cooperative and the Farmers Cooperative Company, an equally large company which was based in little Farnhamville, about 20 miles north of Jefferson. With the two of them, they have grain facilities and other operational centers all across Iowa and up into southern Minnesota. They became “Landus Cooperative” and moved their combined headquarters to Ames.
The idea of the new, merged company investing substantially in a major art project on old grain elevators in one location, just collapsed.
Landus turned the old buildings and grounds over to Greene County.
I was disappointed, of course – still am every time I’m on the trail or at the fairgrounds. Oh, what might have been!
But, you know, I still have high regard for Landus Cooperative. At least they’ve considered big, maybe crazy, ideas when they’ve been presented. They’ve undoubtedly heard a lot of them over their 136 years. Some flopped. But some worked and worked big.
Maybe they need some new ones now.
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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
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Cool idea! I was approached by some folks in Kalona with doing a similar project. We found that projections might be the way to go. Rotating images. No peeling paint. A lot less expensive.
I learned something new today! I didn't know the back story of how you and Tim met. Maybe Chad would do a mural! 🙂 You should do a deep dive series into Iowas roots from small towns to international aid. It makes me lose slep at night what's happening to our farms,small towns and ag economy. Whats going to happen now to all the work Iowans did over the decades for programs like Food for Peace now that the new administration and state department canceled all aid.