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When
you picked up the roses for Valentine’s Day, chances are you
didn’t wonder who figured out how many rosebushes to grow, where
best to cultivate them, and when the blooms would be just about
to pop into lavish, fragrant blossoms. Sounds like a pretty
thorny problem.
It’s one that Baisch and Skinner Inc. deals with on a daily
basis. Yes, you can belong to the FTD network, but how best
to assure you’ll be on the list when Pvt. Ryan in Baghdad keys
in an order to go out to his sweetheart on Feb 14 and guarantee
the bouquet gets to her dorm at Saint Louis University in time?
Consider the business decision Baisch and Skinner Inc. made
in December, when it agreed to acquire North Kansas City–based
wholesale distributor Stuppy Floral Products Co. John Baisch,
president of Baisch and Skinner, characterized the agreement
as an opportunity for his firm to expand its market and increase
economies of scale by expanding its distribution platform.
“Stuppy Floral is a perfect geographical fit to solve the logistical
concerns of the floral industry’s perishable nature,” Baisch
said when announcing the merger.
Beyond fresh flowers, of course, there’s more to agriculture
than commodities. Horticulture and sod, well, turfgrass, are
two of the specialty markets recently discussed at a meeting
of St. Louis Agribusiness Club. Mary Ann Fink, certified arborist,
master gardener and horticultural educator at the Missouri Botanical
Garden, presented that angle.
Tom Keeven presented another. He watches grass grow for a living.
Admittedly, that’s an oversimplification of Keeven’s stock in
trade. Established in 1951, Emerald View Turf Farms grows, installs
and maintains turf for lawns, golf courses and sports fields
throughout the region, including the former Busch Stadium. (For
better drainage, the new Busch features turf from Colorado that
is based in a sandy soil.)
The grass grows green on both sides of the fences—over 1,300
acres at Illinois and Missouri locations. Two cool-season grasses—Kentucky
bluegrass and turf-type tall fescue—and three warm-season grasses—zoysia,
quick-stand Bermuda and buffalo grass—are grown at Emerald View.
Keeven’s operation is neither pulled up or down by commodity
markets. It’s driven by the economy. So, when new housing is
going up or golf courses are under development, business is
good.
No one is likely to plant grass around their McMansion and wait
for it to grow. Today, says Keeven, people want an “instant
lawn.”
But no turfgrass producer can just plant it, wait for it to
grow and expect for it to sell. When the economy slows and golf
courses aren’t doing so well, there can be an overabundance
of zoysia and the other hardy grasses that can take a divot.
Meanwhile, like other non-commodity products including flowers
and shrubs, the crop is always growing somewhere, regardless
of weather—whether in greenhouses or, in the case of turfgrass,
outside all year, at the mercy of the elements.
The vagaries of local economics, in particular, can make any
Ag-related business dry up and die. Baisch and Skinner hoped
to sidestep similar challenges via its recent acquisition, which
Baisch said “provides a platform for economies of scale that
are imperative for distribution operations these days. Our business
deals with perishable product that is shipped in from around
the world.”
Now, the company will be able to leverage six new locations,
improving purchasing capabilities and inventory levels.
Immediately following the merger, Baisch and Skinner began to
integrate operating systems, networks, and customer service
strategies to ensure a smooth transition for customers, vendors,
and employees. Combined administration is in St. Louis with
distribution hubs in Kansas City and St. Louis. In addition
to a store in North Kansas City, five former Stuppy satellite
locations include Quincy, Ill.; Springfield, Mo.; St. Joseph,
Mo., plus Wichita and Topeka, Kan. A family-owned company established
in 1952, Baisch and Skinner has locations in Phoenix; Tampa;
Cape Girardeau, Mo.; and Quincy and Edwardsville, Ill.
In late 2005, the company had opened a new showroom in Tampa,
in 2003 having begun operating a full-service nursery expansion
in downtown St. Louis.
It’s enough to make the unschooled person’s head spin. So, as
you might imagine, Ag education has also evolved: It’s come
a long way from your father’s FFA or 4-H and showing the prize
porker at the county fair. It’s down to business. Ag organizations
have had to change with the times, dealing with everything from
logistics to advances in software. Not to mention the sheer
size of the industry—and its growth rate.
In Illinois, 25 percent of the civilian workforce is employed
in agriculture. About 69 percent of the state’s job growth is
related to agriculture. Nine percent growth is projected for
the next decade.
Swift change led to the formation in 1989 of Facilitating Coordination
in Agricultural Education (FCAE), a program of the Illinois
State Board of Education. Dean Dittmar, president of St. Louis
Agribusiness Club, is FCAE program advisor for District V in
Illinois, which comprises much of the southwestern part of the
state and shares with District 3 the area most significant to
the St. Louis region.
Anyone who has recently visited Columbia or Waterloo, although
they’re both pretty country and pretty “country,” still hasn’t
ventured far enough outside the urban- or suburbanized metro
area of the Metro East. A little farther south is one of the
most livable places in rural America, points out Dittmar in
a recent post to the FCAE community.
In a recent issue of The Progressive Farmer, Randolph County
was rated the third best place to live in rural America. About
an hour south of St. Louis, writes Dittmar, you’ll see “fertile
river bottoms planted to corn, soybeans and wheat that abruptly
stop below the towering limestone bluffs.”
What makes it special is very well what could one day cause
trouble. Rural communities not far to the north, gradually overtaken
by new housing and superstores, bear this out. Just like sensible
growth demands careful planning, education, and educating the
educator, must take advantage of best practices.
Dittmar notes that Ag educators surveyed following a recent
continuing education program complimented not only the information
they gleaned, but how it was presented and easy to access.
Teachers were impressed that they had “ready access to nearly
2,000 assessment questions that measure results against state
standards,” Dittmar points out. “Teachers were glad to see free
access to 250 online electronic units. They called it an ‘electronic’
textbook.”
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This
Apple Didn’t Fall Far From The Tree
ECKERT ORCHARDS DAUGHTER ADOPTS BIG-PICTURE AG VIEW
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By Bill
Beggs Jr.
One need not drive very far in any direction from the Gateway
Arch to see how commercial and residential development has
taken the place of agriculture. Not so many years ago, St.
Clair Square was the largest retail concern just south of
the junction of Illinois 159 and Interstate 64. But the
sprawl of parking lots and ancillary businesses in every
direction has gobbled up farmland, acre by acre.
This hasn’t been lost on Jane Eckert, who grew up south
of there on her family’s apple orchard in Belleville. After
earning a business degree, she spent 18 years in executive
marketing positions, including serving as vice president
of marketing of Eckert’s Country Store and Farms. Advertising,
public relations and merchandising gave the destination
a strong brand identity widely recognized throughout the
region, growing the property into a top tourist attraction
that yearly draws more than a half-million guests.
Meanwhile, she began to develop a hybrid idea: Jane grafted
her marketing acumen to her passion about saving family
farms and ranches. In 2001, she founded Eckert AgriMarketing.
Eckert AgriMarketing provides professional marketing services
to farms, orchards, and ranch operators engaged in agritourism
or direct marketing. The company’s goal is to enable these
properties to attract more customers and more dollars, thus
helping to sustain the North American farm and lifestyle.
But it’s an asphalt jungle out there. Concrete, too.
“We’re seeing governments defining their local zoning to
include further uses for housing developments and shopping
centers, but these accumulating ordinances tend to ignore
and often restrict the farmer’s use of his land,” Eckert
laments.
“I want the family farm—the backbone of our country’s heritage—to
thrive and survive for future generations.”
Thus, agritourism, which provides farmers an opportunity
to supplement their income by pulling in urban- and suburbanites
for anything from overnight stays and hayrides to petting
farm animals, picking fruit and vegetables, negotiating
a maze of maize (in a cornfield, that is; or one fashioned
out of thousands of hay bales) and… launching pumpkins?
“Punkin chunkin” has become all the rage, and quite competitive,
from Maryland to California. Talk about smashing pumpkins:
Pumpkin launchers heave would-be jack o’lanterns into the
distance like huge orange cannonballs, for 100 yards or
more.
All this fun is a very serious business. Eckert counsels
farmers whose livelihoods are constantly being threatened—their
profits eroded by corporate farming, their property by ever-encroaching
development.
The vast expanses of corn and soybeans that once stretched
for miles in every direction as one traveled east along
I-64 past Fairview Heights are being taken up more and more
by hotel complexes, superstores, banks, national chain restaurants,
auto malls and brand-new, upscale neighborhoods—it’s hard
to discern where Fairview ends and O’Fallon begins.
But a couple dozen miles further east at the Okawville interchange,
there’s not much more to stop for than a couple gas stations,
a Hen House restaurant and a store where you can buy most
anything for a dollar. In every direction, farm fields stretch
as far as the eye can see, the horizon interrupted only
by barn roofs and silos.
For the time being. |
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