11 April 2023
GENESEO, Kan. (KSNW) — Business owners in Kansas are feeling the impacts of increased costs, worker shortages and high-interest rates. These challenges are leading the Central Prairie Co-op to make changes at several locations.
“There have been a lot of changes in agriculture in the last several years rapidly with automation and things like that, so we just try to be very selective with that investment,” Central Prairie CEO Mike Corbus said.
Geneseo and Lorraine facilities will switch to seasonal schedules, open during harvest beginning May 1.
But, farmers in the Central Kansas area are angry with this decision.
“Whether you’re open during harvest or not doesn’t mean a thing when you’re not serving us,” Rancher Jim Gray said. “If you’re not going to serve us, why should we serve you?”
In Geneseo, they will be open a few hours a week to sell products such as range cubes. For services such as seed cleaning, the Central Prairie Co-op CEO says they will work with customers to make that available as needed.
In Lorraine, the fuel pumps will remain open daily. Anhydrous availability will continue as needed.
The company says during harvest, customers should not notice any difference in hours of operation or speed of dumping.
Pollard and Saxman will be storage only, effective immediately. Storage-only elevators will not be actively used during harvest.
“This is a business that our business completely depends upon,” Gray said.
He goes to the Geneseo facility every day and is worried about the plan.
“Farming and ranching doesn’t work on a tight schedule like that,” Gray said. “Things happen.”
Services and products in Bushton and Little River will continue year-round. If customers cannot get what they need at their local co-op, they can travel about 30 miles round trip each week.
Gray says that is time and money, which is hard to come by.
Many customers said they don’t want to do business with Central Prarie Co-op any more.
“Personally, I don’t intend to do any more business than I have to with them because I don’t appreciate doing business with someone who doesn’t care about my business,” Gray said.
Corbus says this is a difficult decision, but it is needed to make sure the facilities don’t close down permanently.
“We also recognize the fact that most of these elevators along this corridor of our footprint are pretty close together,” Corbus said. That happened back in the ’50s, times were a lot different.”
Some farmers and ranchers expressed their frustrations about being stockholders but not being supported in their businesses.
One farmer said, “There has to be some look at providing service for your stockholders and your customers.”
Another didn’t feel like the decision was fair:
“You kind of just said to heck with this whole northeast side of the co-op.”