I had the pleasure of attending the March meeting of the Minster Civic Association Tuesday evening, March 29th. I’ve been a member of this wonderful community service group for a little over a year now, and I can tell you that these folks take their business and their community service seriously. We meet monthly to discuss service opportunities and business over the legendary fried chicken baskets at the historic Wooden Shoe Inn in downtown Minster. This month’s meeting included an informative report from the Minster Schools regarding the upcoming levy, and an excellent presentation by the Minster Boy Scout Troop 44. Minster Troop 44 is the largest Scout troop in the entire Black Swamp Council (covering 13 counties in NW Ohio). They’ve got an impressive history dating back to the mid-1940’s, and since its inception, the Troop has produced 51 Eagle Scouts. The Civic Association voted to once again re-charter Scout Troop 44.
One of the unique features of the Minster Civic Association is the meeting format itself. Most monthly meetings include an off-site tour of a Minster business, prior to the club business meeting at the Wooden Shoe. This evening, several members met at the Trupointe Cooperative facility in Minster. Trupointe CEO Larry Hammond, site manager Neil Wiedeman, and several staff members conducted a facility tour and Mr. Hammond gave a presentation on the Trupointe Cooperative business. Hammond began his presentation with some eye opening statistics: In 1930, 1 farmer produced enough food to feed 10 people. Today’s farmer can feed 155 people. In 1930, the agriculture (Ag) industry employed 22% of working Americans. Today, the Ag industry employs just 2%. By 2050, it is predicted that the human population will increase by 50%. In order to keep up with that pace of population growth, farmers will need to increase their production by 70%. The challenge is clear: our population is growing, but no one is making any more farm ground. “Our cooperative system must position itself to effectively serve an increasingly sophisticated and demanding producer-customer base,” said Hammond.
Trupointe, headquartered in Piqua, is owned by the farmer-customers they serve, making it a true cooperative organization. Last year, Trupointe gave over $6,900,000.00 of their profits back to their customer-owners (farmer-producers). Trupointe’s 500+ employees operate 50 facilities from the Fort Wayne, IN area down through western Ohio to the Ohio River. The Trupointe facility in Minster purchases corn, beans and wheat for distribution as feed and (corn) for use in the production of Ethanol. In 2010, they took in 1,100,000 bushels of grain at the Minster site. With their silo capacity of 500,000 bushels, this means they filled and emptied their silos over two times during the season. Trupointe also operates a retail store/drive thru where customers can purchase anything from a diverse variety of animal feeds to ice melter, turf fertilizer products to Holland brand grills, and soon they will be able to refill propane cylinders. Hammond emphasized the fact the Trupointe made over $400,000.00 in capital improvements to the Minster facility in 2010. “I want to keep our facilities nice,” said Hammond. “We need to look like a business that’s going to be there.” The upgrades included re-configuring the physical plant to eliminate traffic congestion at the weigh scales, and the development of a site to offer propane cylinder refill services.
Hammond reported that Trupointe projects $616,000,000.00 in sales and a net income of $13,000,000.00 in 2011. Trupointe supplies their 10,000+ customers with 300,000 tons of fertilizer; 50,000,000 bushels of grain (bought and marketed); 300,000 tons of feed; 15,000,000 gallons of fuel delivered; $5,000,000 in turf management sales and services; and $5,000,000 in farm and retail store sales. “Our co-op is owned by over 4,500 farmer-customers and we’re governed by a 10 member board of directors,” said Hammond. “When we can put 50,000,000 bushels of grain on the market for our farmers, we can create overseas relationships to market and sell grain for them. One of the reasons we put this (co-op) together was to manage the weather.” Hammond explained that by having a large number of farmer-customers spread across a larger area, they are less likely to be negatively impacted by local and regional weather events.
The benefits of being an owner-member-customer of a co-operative like Trupointe are numerous for the local farmer. Trupointe provides a global market for the commodities produced on local farms here in Auglaize County. The unique feature of the co-op business model is that the co-operative re-invests a significant amount of money back into its farmer-customers. Many of the large multi-national agri-businesses do not provide a significant re-investment for their customers like the co-op does. The Southwestern Auglaize County Chamber of Commerce is proud to have organizations like the Minster Civic Association and Trupointe Cooperative, Inc. as members. They are fine examples of what can happen when people come together for a common purpose that can benefit many folks beyond their organizations.
1 comment:
Hey, just for future reference, Minster's Boy Scout Troop is not the biggest in the Black Swamp Area Council. We are 2nd or 3rd. The biggest, by far, is the Ottawa troop, with about 90 members last I heard. We are always the biggest troop during our week at Summer Camp at Camp Lakota, though. We hope to continue to grow, as we have been recruiting a lot in the past year. We stand just above 30 registered boys.
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