Noah Lee, Mississippi State University,

Hello again, my name is Noah Lee, and I am a Junior from Peoria majoring in Poultry Science at Mississippi State. In May I got the opportunity to shadow several people at Grainland Farmers Coop in Eureka and Minier. I got to talk with many people who work at Grainland Farmers including Terry Bline, CEO, Caycee McGinnis, Eureka outside location
manager, and Guy Hainline, Grainland’s originator, as well as many others. Together Grainland’s employees work together at nine different locations to dry, store, sell, and ship grain to various buyers at a profit. One factor that makes Grainland Farmers stand out is that they have two facilities that can ship by rail. Eureka can take full trains, and Emden can take about 25 rail cars at a time. This allows them to sell to markets beyond Central Illinois. Some of their main local buyers were the Illinois River, Ethanol plants in Peoria, Pekin, and Hennepin, and they also sold some non-GMO beans to Cargill in Bloomington. Some of their main buyers via rail were Incobrasa in Gilman, poultry producers in the Southeast, and the Gulf of Mexico.

I thought it was really interesting how everyone had to pull their weight and be flexible to make the Coop profitable. If the operations guys let grain get damaged or fall short of grade, they could cause Grainland to be docked. If the guys in the office did not account for trucking restrictions and inventory, they could affect if a train could be loaded within twenty four hours.

Communication was prioritized at each location, and I got to see this first hand by sitting in on an outside manager’s meeting, where they discussed various projects and repairs they were working on throughout the coop. I also saw that flexibility was important, as some employees had to work odd hours because they were out planting or others were going on vacation. I also learned how the train loading crew has to be flexible, because trains often arrive several days
later than hoped for, which can mean that they have to be loaded on a weekend or holiday.

I also thought it was impressive how Grainland Farmers managed to keep track of all of the moving parts of their business. They have to buy, store, and condition grain, dispatch trucks to certain elevators, send them to different buyers, keep track of various records, track trains, monitor markets, hedge grain, deal with breakdowns and ensure compliance with various regulations and safety protocols. I also thought it was cool how a bushel of soybeans or corn
grown right here in Central Illinois could reach an end market a county over or even an ocean
over.

In the end, I learned a lot from shadowing with Grainland Farmers and would like to thank them, especially Terry and Caycee. I also learned a lot from the Industry Immersion Scholarship program as a whole, and it has definitely opened my eyes to the careers in grain close to home in Central Illinois. Thank you to everyone who is a part of GFAI’s scholarship program; it has truly been a blessing to be a part of in many ways.