Dr. Rick Ringer, associate professor, Illinois State University College of Business, was honored with the “Friend of Growmark” award at the cooperative’s annual meeting in Chicago in late August. The award was established in 1989 to recognize outstanding leadership and commitment to agriculture, and friendship to the Growmark System.
Also at the meeting, five FS member cooperatives were recognized for business performance improvement. The cooperative with the highest degree of improvement was Ag View FS, Inc., Princeton, Ill. Mark Orr is the manager and Ron Pierson is president.
Ranking second was Lincoln Land FS Inc., Jacksonville, Ill. Keith Hufendick is the general manager, and Joe Pickrell is the president. Conserv FS Inc., Woodstock, Ill., with David Mottet, manager, and John Henning, president, was in third place. Fourth place was held by Vineland Growers Co-operative Ltd., Jordan Station, Ont., George Mitges, manager, and Phil Tregunno, president. Ranking fifth was Southern FS Inc., Marion, Ill. Alan Kirby is the manager, and Rollo Burnett is the president. Growmark measures the improvement based on return on invested capital. Each cooperative’s return on invested capital improvement is measured over a five-year timeframe in comparison to other cooperatives in the system.
Intrepid Potash Inc.’s board of directors on Aug. 30 increased the number of directors from five to six and elected Chris Elliott as a Class I director. He will serve as an independent director. Elliott has approximately 23 years of work experience in the agriculture industry. Since 2007, he has been the president and co-owner of Accuform Technologies LLC, an agriculture product development company. He is also president and CEO of Agricultural Co. of America Partners LP, a company that owns and manages agriculture real estate and operates farms producing a variety of crops over a diverse geographic spectrum. Elliott previously served as president and CEO of Nutra-Park Inc., an agriculture plant growth regulator company, from 2002 to 2006.
Karin Dorrepaal will join DSM on Sept. 1 as senior vice president in the corporate strategy & acquisitions department, reporting to Hein Schreuder. At the end of 2011 she is to succeed Schreuder, who is at present executive vice president corporate strategy & acquisitions, reporting to Feike Sijbesma, CEO and chairman of the managing board. Dorrepaal, a Dutch national, has had several non-executive roles since leaving the executive board of Schering AG in Berlin. At Schering, she was responsible for business diagnostic imaging, as well as the global supply chain and procurement. Prior to joining Schering she was with Booz Allen & Hamilton (now Booz & Co.) for 14 years, where she was a leader of the Life Science practice. She holds a PhD in Medicine, as well as an MBA.