The theme of the 2011 GROWMARK Annual Meeting is Value Driven and there are over 1,000 stakeholders attending the meeting in Chicago this week.
I spent a few minutes with Dan Kelley, Chairman of the Board and President of GROWMARK, prior to the opening reception Thursday night about what value-driven means to GROWMARK. “The GROWMARK system has historically been recognized for having a high standard of ethics and we carry that into customer responsiveness and being able to satisfy our customers’ needs and hopefully exceed their expectations,” he said.
Dan says it has been a very good year for GROWMARK and agriculture in general. “Agriculture has been one of the stellar industries in this economic downturn over the last 2-3 years,” he said. “We have now recorded our best seven years in the history of the GROWMARK system, which is 84 years.”
Dan operates a grain farm in partnership with his two brothers and son, and he says it has been a challenging growing season for the Midwest, so every bushel counts. “I’ve heard yields from almost zero, in the low 40s, to as high as 240,” and that’s just in McLean County, where Dan farms in Normal and where GROWMARK headquarters are located in Bloomington.
Listen to my interview with Dan Kelley here. GROWMARK President Dan Kelley