Grain Update on Facilities Impacted by the Derecho
Aug 31, 2020
Like many of you and our neighbors, your Cooperative continues to clean-up the damages caused by the storms on August 10th. Between our facilities at Martelle, Stanwood and Clarence we lost just under 2 million bushels of bin space plus the loss of spouting, legs and conveyors to fill the space that is still standing. As we evaluate the damage, our primary goal is developing a short term plan that allows us to best serve our customers this fall. Our biggest challenge will be handling soybeans at these facilities. Clarence (320,000 bushels) will not be operational this fall, Stanwood bean space will be down 400,000 bushels and Martelle bean space is down 250,000 bushels. Some things we are doing to offset this space deficit:
- At Stanwood we believe we can get a leg put up at the corn site and we will convert 3 of the corn bins that were not damaged to beans, we will not be able to dump corn at Stanwood
- At Martelle and Olin, we will convert corn space to beans where we can
- Work with our truck fleet to keep beans moving to market and keep bean space as fluid as we can
- Prepare lime pads at Olin and Martelle to pile corn on the ground
For customers that have grain contracted into these locations, but cannot deliver the grain to the location, we will work with you on freight if delivered to a different location or possibly convert the contract to farm pick-up.
Longer term we will evaluate the facilities impacted and make decisions on how to rebuild space in this area.