Season’s Greetings! What a wonderful time of year it is to spend time with family and friends. 2024 was full of challenges once again! We started this spring with delayed planting due to the excessive moisture, which quickly turned into a drought in the second half of the growing season. The old saying of no two years are alike certainly held true this year.
Even with the challenges that Mother Nature threw our way, we have a lot to be thankful for as well. In February we officially welcomed the Ida Farmers employees, members, and customers to Luckey Farmers. The merger took countless hours of work by a very dedicated team who stood up to the task and made it happen, while also completing their normal responsibilities. Thank you!
In April we purchased land adjacent to our Lemoyne grain facility and broke ground on a facility expansion at that site. This expansion brings an additional 725,000 bushels of storage to the Luckey Farmers footprint. Receiving capacity at this site is 20,000 bushels per hour and includes an inbound and outbound scale, new probe, along with automation to move customer traffic through the site quickly and efficiently as we know your time is valuable. This investment took considerable planning and execution from both the Board of Directors and the management team to bring the site online in time for the fall harvest of 2024. This large investment has been an excellent addition to this location.
In October the members of both Luckey Farmers and Mid-Wood approved a merger that will combine our cooperatives on February 1, 2025. I’m pleased to say that we have assembled a team of employees from both cooperatives that have been working hard already in the background to again make this merger a success early next year. Our combined footprint in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan will proudly serve our members and customers from 20 locations going forward.
Thank you again for trusting us to work with you as a partner on your farm. We will continue to strive to identify ways to strengthen your cooperative and deliver value to you. I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
