Growing the Agronomy Division

Upon graduating from Iowa State in 1963 with a degree in ag business in hand, Ron Stutsman came home with absolutely no intention of joining the family business. Instead, he bought a group of 120 heifers for $28 per head. He sold them for $22 per head. He tried again with a second group of heifers, only to lose money once more. Ron (and his banker) knew he had to do something different. To help offset the losses of his cattle project, Ron purchased a Hahn Hi-Boy sprayer in the summer of 1964.

Ron bought the sprayer from Ag-Chem salesman Jim Malaphy for $2,400. He paid $600 down, and the rest was financed with a bank in Edina, Minnesota, in three $600 payments.

He charged $1.25 per acre, plus the cost of 2,4-D that summer. On a good day, he could spray about 100 to 125 acres. Spraying was stopped after pollination was complete. Overall, the season typically lasted about four weeks.

The second year with the Hahn Hi-Boy, Ron started spraying Treflan and Amiben pre-emerge for soybeans. This process was much slower going because the ground was softer. Plus, these chemicals had to be incorporated into the soil, so he couldn’t work too far ahead of the disk.

The original Hahn Hi-Boy was underpowered. Eventually, Hahn upgraded with more horsepower and rear-wheel drive. The Hi-Boy’s successor, the Super Go-Boy had a 400-gallon tank. This is quite the difference from the 1,800-gallon tank sprayers we run today.

On top of using Hi-Boys, Stutsmans became Hahn dealers. To help manage the rapid growth of the dealership, Jim Stutsman delayed his graduation from Iowa State University for two years to help service and sell the sprayers (he went back to finish his remaining 10 hours for his degree in agricultural business and economics in 1971).

“I enjoyed it. We were aggressive and bought a lot of product in the winter to be competitive come spring,” added Jim Stutsman.

For several years, the Stutsman Hahn dealership had considerable success both selling and servicing. Although we enjoyed being a Hahn dealer, it became too much with the rapidly growing fertilizer business. Hahn sales and service responsibilities naturally overlapped the busy fertilizer season.

Back then, Hahn was the industry leader and really pioneered the application of ag chemicals. It’s been quite amazing to experience the evolution of equipment from the Hi-Boys back then to the Terragators and Rogators of today.

The Agronomy Department is Born

Our first dealings in fertilizer date back to the late ’50s to early ’60s with 80-pound bags of 3-6-12 from Virginia Carolina Fertilizer and ammonium nitrate from Spencer Chemical Company. However, the “fertilizer department” didn’t really gain traction until Ron officially came on board.

Not too long after Ron started custom spraying with his Hahn Hi-Boy, Rock Island Railroad discontinued their coal business in 1965. Eldon Stutsman had purchased the Rock Island buildings that were adjacent to the Stutsman warehouse. These concrete bins that once stored coal would now provide the capacity for 400 to 500 tons of bulk fertilizer.

Just as Eldon was in the right place at the right time with Schreiber Mills and Sweet Lassy, fate would play a crucial role in developing Ron’s career path.

As luck would have it, WR Grace had over-purchased 41% nitrogen and needed to find a home for it. Because of their flat freight rate on the Rock Island Railroad, their sales rep, Ted Cowens, was analyzing the rail system to see if there would be any takers for their extra nitrogen. After stumbling across Hills, Ted paid Eldon a visit. Recognizing the unique opportunity, Eldon called Rob at the farm and said, “Hey, you should come to Hills to meet this guy.” WR Grace installed our first liquid tank, and the rest is history.

The 41% nitrogen arrived in 100-ton rail cars. It had 15 to 20 pounds of pressure which required the use of pressure equipment. WR Grace also sold us 10-10-10, 15-10-10 and 20-10-10. The addition of a blender a few years later allowed us to blend mixes of 0-46-0, 0-0-60 and 33.5-0-0.

In the first year of sidedressing, we had two carloads of nitrogen and just one applicator. Growers allowed Ron to test their fields in 40-row increments; if they liked what they saw, they would take more the next year. Growers were thrilled with the increase in yields. With the help of neighborhood friends and tractors borrowed from their fathers, we were sidedressing entire fields in year two and had used 10 carloads for the season. All sidedressing was custom applied with five-row, 400-gallon tank machines.

It certainly was a modest start, but it didn’t take long to catch on, especially for growers. Not long after Ron had started sidedressing, Butch Oberman called and asked Ron to apply 300 acres. When Ron collected the payment, Butch gave him a check for not only the 300 acres he had just done but for 300 more the next year. He only had one request and one suggestion: with his pre-payment, he wanted to ensure he was first in line the following season and that Ron would buy an additional nurse tank and applicator so he wouldn’t have to wait so long.

Not only did this newly found service and product line provide Ron with his “something else to do for a living” but it served as a great pairing with our other “division”, grain bins. Building and servicing grain bins provided meaningful work for the fertilizer team, ensuring they had full-time work year-round.

As a young man himself, Jim Stutsman made his entrance into the company by building and servicing those same grain bins at the age of 14. By the time he was 16, he was training crews on how to construct the bins all over eastern Iowa.

Agronomic Innovations

The agronomy division experienced foundational growth in the ’70s as well. In January 1973, Tom Bayliss would join the Stutsman team as one of the first dedicated agronomists. A recent graduate of Iowa State University’s agronomy and animal science programs, Tom was recommended to Ron by a former manager of Keiser Ag Chemicals. During Tom’s interview, Ron admitted the agronomy department was small: most fertilizers were bagged, there was one 12,000-gallon liquid nitrogen tank from WR Grace, some anhydrous ammonia storage and a fertilizer shed that only held four rail cars of DAP and potash. Ultimately, Ron was looking for someone to grow the agronomy division but more importantly, someone who would treat that business like it was their own.

“It was during this meeting I made the decision that I wasn’t going to work anywhere else for the rest of my career,“ commented Tom.

Tom’s first sales call with Cecil Altmaier, “a community icon,” not only proved his service philosophy aligned with Eldon and Ron’s but also would help lead growth for the agronomy department. Although Cecil was adamant he was loyal to his current retailer and the first 2/3 of the conversation was held through a closed screen door, Tom’s knowledge and determination to provide innovative agronomic solutions piqued Cecil’s curiosity. When Cecil started doing business with Stutsmans and trying new techniques, community members noticed and started following suit.

One of those new, “next level” solutions was soil sampling. Although far from popular in the industry, we started soil sampling by ourselves to figure out what was going on in growers’ fields to make fertilizer recommendations. This certainly was going against the grain of the standard recommendation of 100 pounds of ammonia, 130 pounds of potash and 133 pounds of DAP. This soil sampling program certainly broke the ceiling for many of our customers and really jumpstarted the division’s growth.

Not only was Tom passionate about liquid fertilizer but Ron also wanted to truly be a full-service agronomy provider, so liquid (mainly suspensions) became a key focus for the agronomy team as well as the steppingstone for continued growth. However, to make a go in the liquid side of the business, we needed a way to apply the product. At the time, the Big A — predecessor to Terragators — really was the only option but not a financially feasible one for the young agronomy department.

As a good indicator of the problem-solving and resourcefulness Tom would bring to the organization, he turned a wrecked Hahn sprayer, an old 1962 International 1600, 1,000-gallon tank and Defco pumping system into our first custom-built, self-propelled liquid fertilizer applicator. As our lone applicator, Tom covered 8,100 acres that first year. This successful first year led to Ron purchasing a Terragator (which was the third machine AgCo has built) that next year.

The growth of our agronomy services started to outpace the capacity of our facilities. On top of the eight-ton Barnard and Leas liquid mix plant, construction of the scale house and dry shed (adding 3,000 ton of dry fertilizer storage) began in the mid ’70s. Our retail mix plant would follow suit a few years later, which would set us up to not only have the first automated mixing system in the country but also serve as a testing ground and business-launching opportunity for a fellow entrepreneur.

While employed with Barnard & Leas, Dave Junge, kept thinking there was a better way to streamline the blending process. After having his ideas shrugged off a few times by his employer, Dave came to Ron to see if he would be interested in partnering. Although Ron recognized the immense opportunity automation would bring, the company didn’t really have the resources to help Dave jumpstart his business venture. Ron encouraged Dave that he could make a go at this on his own and that we’d be willing to be the first customer. Not only would we be willing to try out the first system but also be a testing site for improvements in the future. Junge Controls was officially established in 1979.

The suspension products proved to be a hit with growers in the area for their quality and price point over traditional fertilizers offered at the time. As the popularity of suspensions grew, we started to provide product for 28 agronomy retailers in Iowa and Illinois. This “dipping-our-toes into the world of business-to-business” had Ron challenging Tom to transition his focus from retail to strictly wholesale by the mid ’80s.

Operational Expansion

The ’90s brought an urgency to protect the environment. It was essential to have clean air and water. The newfound environmentally conscious attitude created many changes for our industry and our customers’ operations. New laws also prompted changes on our campus. A law regarding diking and containment pertaining to fertilizer storage and loading areas brought many changes to our agronomy operations. A new bentonite clay-lined earthen dike was constructed to house the tanks that store our raw ingredients to make liquid fertilizers. In October 1996, both the retail and wholesale liquid plants and load-out facilities were constructed. Throughout the ’90s, we’d be recognized for our environmental operation-improving efforts through Dupont’s Environmental Respect Award and honored in the Ag Retailer of the Month publication.

“We were leading the path and inventing the process for the new facilities. People came in from all over to see what we built and the automation of the facilities,” added Jim.

Not only were we adjusting how we operated in Hills, but this decade also brought about changes in how our customers farmed. The advancement of biotechnology and GMOs paved the way for the success of no-till. Advances in Roundup resistant crops allowed for improved weed control in no-till environments. It created greater yields for farmers, without disturbing the soil.

Spraying fields in an open cab also became a practice of the past. The agronomy department upgraded to air-conditioned John Deere and AgChem sprayers. The transition also added tandem axle nurse trucks with 3,200-gallon tanks from the original single axle 1,600-gallon tanks. This improvement led to greater sprayer efficiency and improved applicator comfort.

Technology Breakthroughs

The ’90s were also a time of innovation in agricultural technology. Industry leaders were at the forefront of creating technology that was precise, data-driven and customer-focused. The industry’s first yield monitor was released by Ag Leader in 1992, the Yield Monitor 2000^TM. It featured a simple screen and tracked average moisture percent, total weight, total bushels and average bushels per acre. These numbers could be calculated for the entire field or be broken down by load or even combine pass.

Ag Leader technology changed the way we did business as well. This not only allowed us to break into the precision agriculture arena from an equipment standpoint, be we elevated our advisory role for customers, making recommendations from the yield maps and giving growers the power to start making more accurate management decisions based on pH, weed control, tile drainage and more.

With the significant increase in field data collected from the latest technological advancements, we added a tool to help process and organize the data efficiently. The HighQ system was developed in part by our great friends in Maryland, Willard Agri Service. This system used data collection to create an easy analysis tool to help growers evaluate their management choices to make less risky and more profitable decisions. What started as pre-harvest yield monitor training meetings would evolve into post-harvest data evaluation reviews with HighQ.

Precision technology has come a long way from when it was first introduced on our product line in 1996. For us, the yield monitor also guided the transition to analytical agronomy decision-making, including our precision ag program today, ProVantage. The program combines data analysis at the grower’s individual farm level with our local agronomic knowledge. The program is centered around giving growers information specific to their operation to make more profitable decisions.

Division Today

With locations in Hills, Riverside, Wellman and Fairfax, we can nimbly serve southeast Iowa growers with nutrients, protection products, seed, custom application and precision ag analysis (ProVantage). To better serve wholesale and retail customers alike and maximize our efficiency, the original dry fertilizer shed was torn down in the summer of 2022. By December 2022, the new facility (attached to the 2010 addition) gave us the ability to hold 25 more railcars of product, doubled the speed of the receiving process (250 tons per hour) and improved our batch speed to nine tons a minute. The new blender is rated at 16 tons per batch. This allows us to mix straight truckloads in one batch. Instead of one weigh hopper feeding the blender, there are now seven that are fully automated.