GROWMARK has two reasons to celebrate this year – the International Year of the Cooperative and GROWMARK’s 85th anniversary. “The cooperative obviously has evolved a lot over those 85 years,” says Dan Kelley, Illinois farmer and president of the GROWMARK Board of Directors. “Energy is still a main part of GROWMARK’s product distribution. Nearly half of our sales continue to …
GROWMARK Recognized for Communicators’ Works
We’ve had the pleasure of helping our friends at GROWMARK tell their story right here on this blog, and now, several of the company’s employees who also tell that story have been recognized by the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) Institute, recently held in Tucson, Arizona. This company press release has details. First place honors went to Cassie Becker, corporate communications …
Help Feed the World with GROWMARK Cookbook
GROWMARK employees have created a cookbook to help a group focused on feeding the world. In celebration of the International Year of Cooperatives, GROWMARK has announced that proceeds from sales of a new cookbook will go to Farmers Feeding the World, an industry-wide campaign to rally North American agriculture in the war against hunger. GROWMARK System employees and friends submitted …
GROWMARK Hosts French Cooperative
In the spirit of cooperation between cooperatives, Illinois-based GROWMARK hosted leaders from the French cooperative Terrena last week as part of a 12-day tour of United States agriculture. “We were approached by the tour leader about coordinating an exchange of ideas between the Terrena leadership and GROWMARK’s leadership,” said Chuck Spencer, GROWMARK director, Government Affairs. “Because our agricultural products compete …
GROWMARK Keeps IT Growing
As a multi-state agricultural co-operative system with over 6000 employees and numerous brands, information technology (IT) is a vital aspect of GROWMARK‘s ability to communicate on a number of levels. That keeps GROWMARK Manager of Network Services Scott Bross busy keeping up with the latest on-line communications tools – from improved websites to blogs and all the various social networking …
How GROWMARK Uses Social Media to Recruit
GROWMARK’s gold-standard internship program is over 50 years old and it keeps growing because they are using all of the latest social media tools to reach students about the potential for career opportunities within the vast cooperative system. “Social media has allowed us to continue to enhance our traditional recruiting efforts,” says University Relations Manager Ashley McClintock. “We utilize Facebook, …
Total Grain and Fertilizer on Track
Total Grain Marketing (TGM) handled 70 million bushels of grain at its 31 locations in Illinois last year and this year is likely to be even more. During the recent GROWMARK media tour, we visited TGM and South Central FS in Casey (that’s pronounced Cay-zee) and learned about that facility in particular which was created when the two entities joined …
Fast Stop General Store More than Convenience
If you want to fill up with E85, get your propane tank refilled, grab some food for your llama and new Muck boots for spring field work, satisfy your sweet tooth with bulk candy, pick up some locally produced noodles and Fluffy Burgers for dinner, enjoy some Champ’s chicken for lunch, order a new garage door, and maybe bring your …
GROWMARK Legislative Priorities
GROWMARK government affairs director Chuck Spencer shared some of the agricultural cooperative’s top legislative priorities on both the state and national level during the media day tour this week. Chuck and other GROWMARK representatives participated in the Ag Day event Wednesday at the Illinois state capitol to talk with legislators about some of those priorities. “Obviously everyone in Illinois is …
cropNAtion App Now Available
It has been a long time coming. Well, not really. It just seems like it. But the cropNAtion App is now available in the iTunes Store and Android Market. The “virtual coffeeshop” was introduced last fall. I spoke with Heather Thompson during the GROWMARK Media Tour about the newly available app. She says that cropNAtion is a social network for …