After nearly a year of construction, a $7 million grain and agronomy facility built by North Central Farmers Elevator is in operation east of Faulkton in central South Dakota.
The new facility includes four grain bins with capacity for 950,000 bushels, an outdoor pad with 1 million bushels capacity, and two receiving pits. The facility’s agronomy center, which opened last April, has six above-ground tanks with total storage capacity of 850 st of dry fertilizer, eight liquid tanks with 100,000 gallons capacity, and four bulk seed tanks that can hold approximately 15,000 pounds of seed.
North Central has 12 employees at Faulkton, with five in the agronomy department. The location is managed by Marv Hutchinson, with the agronomy department managed by Kevin Stark.
North Central acquired the site when it bought Faulkton Farmers Elevator in December 2010. The original elevator remains open, bringing total grain storage capacity at the Faulkton site to roughly 2.6 million bushels. The location has no rail access, so all tonnage is moved by truck.
Headquartered in Ipswich, S.D., North Central is a full service, farmer-owned cooperative with 17 locations serving more than 2,500 producer-members in north central South Dakota and south central North Dakota. The company has been in business since 1915, when it got its start as Farmers Equity Elevator Company. The name changed to North Central Farmers Elevator in 1993.
In 1999 the cooperative built a 1 million gallon UAN tank in Ipswich; in 2005 it completed construction of its Mega Fertilizer Plant in Craven, S.D., which has dry capacity of 32,500 st (GM March 15, 2004). The cooperative also completed construction of an agronomy center and fertilizer plant in Highmore, S.D., in 2010.