2018 Spring Farm

2018 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS March 22, 2018 Page 25 “We hit a lot of home runs here in Logan County but we also strike out occasionally, whereas in an irrigated area they consistently hit a lot of doubles with their production,” said Lowery. “They will never get the top-end yield,” said Lowery of the irrigated fields, “But they will never bottom out with a drought either. Irrigation is expensive production but it’s worth it because of its consistency.” Remington Seeds, LLC, based out of Remington, Indiana, has 26 production and distribution locations throughout the United States and features a plant here in Lincoln, Illinois. Toby Terrell of Remington Seeds, LLC, explains his company’s situation, as the seed corn grower faced similar issues. “As far as Remington is concerned the decision to move out of Logan County was not an easy one. Logan County has many top notch farmers. They are great people that we had built long-term relationships with and good people that we will miss moving forward. We unfortunately had to make some tough decisions and essentially consolidate our growing area. I was looking after production for both the Congerville and Bloomington seed facilities as the growing areas were close together. Simply based on efficiencies, we felt it was best to consolidate to one area, to reduce miles and make our operations more efficient. The two areas were close together but when you put the two together, we were covering a very large area in total.” Remington Seeds chose to move seed corn production to the Tazewell/McLean County areas over the Logan/Mason county areas. Terrell explains, “Much of the decision had to do with the volume of irrigation that had gone up in the McLean/Tazewell County areas and that irrigation was being installed on dark (high-producing) ground. Because of this, we had seen a slight yield increase in the McLean/ Tazewell area verses the Logan County area over the last several years. Many of our customers are pursuing irrigated production ground and we are following their demands. We did have several acres of irrigated ground in Logan and Mason Counties, but on lighter soils. One season after this consolidation, Remington closed the Congerville facility and cut our production in half. We were going to be forced to make several cuts due to a closing facility and this would have left us with fewer acres – once again spread out over a very large area.” Both Lowery and Terrell seemed to concur on this situation. Lowery cited that “yields are more consistent with irrigation” and Terrell also noted “efficiency with yields was a tipping point for our decision” to move beyond Logan County. [Teena Lowery]