Much of the country's grain storage and grain handling infrastructure is decades old. Elevators located in rural towns have cumbersome traffic patterns and unloading systems that can be backed up and slow. Many have limited or no ability to load rail cars.

Producer Ag LLC, a joint venture of Mid-Kansas Co-op and CHS, is doing something about that.

Just in time for wheat harvest in Sumner County, the newest rail terminal for Producer Ag opened for business on June 1 at 7:30 a.m. By noon, the first truckloads of canola of the 2017 harvest season had rolled in.

DUMP PIT: Trucks from other Mid-Kansas Cooperative elevators began unloading wheat at the new Producer Ag terminal the last week of May. The loads from storage came in to allow testing of all the terminal systems ahead of the real deal: the Sumner County wheat harvest of 2017.

Built on 223 acres of land that offers plenty of room for expansion, the region's newest "prairie skyscraper" offers a total of 7.5 million bushels of storage, a 2-mile rail loop, a traffic pattern that keeps trucks moving and automated record-keeping that assures trucks will get in and out fast.

The terminal features concrete silos for about 3.5 million bushels of storage and an enormous flat storage building measuring 200 by 800 feet to store another 4 million bushels. The flat storage is divided into three sections to enable storage of multiple commodities if necessary.

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For now, the excess land around the terminal will be leased to a local farmer who plans to plant soybeans this year, according to Jeff Jones, director of southern operations manager for MKC. At some point, a portion might be leased to another business venture, he says.

"We have designed the whole terminal so that it can be expanded if necessary in the future. We could add another flat storage building the same size as the existing one. The idea is to build for what we envision the future need may be and be prepared to expand," he says. "Most of today's infrastructure is very old, and a lot of the technology is outdated."

He points out that the flat storage, unlike the ground bunkers that are far more common around the country, has temperature and moisture sensors and ventilation that allows it to be used for long-term storage.

The new Sumner County terminal, located just south of Highway 160 about 10 miles south of Conway Springs and 8 miles east of Argonia, is in the heart of the country's largest wheat- and milo-producing county. It joins the first Producer Ag rail terminal in Canton, which opened in 2015, in offering the latest technology in grain truck unloading and rail car loadout capability.

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Each truck driver bringing in grain is issued an electronic card that is loaded with all pertinent data from the customer delivering to Producer Ag. As a driver pulls into the terminal, there are pull-off areas for him to stop and roll back the tarp.

As the truck enters either of two inbound scales, the driver touches his RFID card to a reader that tells the operator inside the pertinent information. A phone connection is available for the driver to report which field his load is from. As the load is weighed and information exchanged, probes take samples of the load for analysis.

The driver is then told to pull onto the scales after probing to weigh and receive pit assignments. The terminal features four dump pits, three with 1,200-bushel capacity — which Jones wryly comments would be a "well-filled" semi — and one 600-bushel pit.

After unloading, the truck driver pulls around the loop to either one of two outbound scales. He taps his RFID card, which is then automatically updated to reflect the load he just delivered. A receipt prints automatically for him to pull from the printer.

The terminal, while timed for opening with wheat and canola harvest, will also accept corn, soybeans and grain sorghum.

"This area has seen a big increase in the production of fall row crops," Jones said. "That has meant elevators stay busy almost all year round. We have wheat harvest in June and July, but we start getting full-season milo and soybeans in August and September and double-crop beans and milo and corn later into the fall. There's not much of a slowdown."

Jones says the yearlong building process at the terminal has been a good experience.

"We have a good relationship with our railroad, BNSF, and we have received fabulous support from Wellington community. Our goal is to offer a farmer-owned alternative to the big private terminals," he says. "From right here in Sumner County, we will be able to ship grain to anywhere in the world. As a terminal, we will have slightly higher prices, which will benefit area farmers, and we will be able to accept grain from the small, local co-ops and help them share in that advantage."

He says farmers do not have to be MKC members to deliver grain to the terminal, but those who wish to receive patronage would need to be members of MKC.

Producer Ag paid for the installation of the 2-mile-long railroad loop, and BNSF will have the right to use that loop to park cars, he says. The company also provided for the addition of turn lanes to Highway 160 so that incoming trucks turning into the terminal would not slow the flow of traffic on the highway.

The new terminal brings about 11 full-time jobs and 10 seasonal jobs to Sumner County.

Learn more at New Sumner County Producer Ag terminal open for business. 

Team Marketing Alliance is Producer Ag partner

Grain delivered to the new Producer Ag rail terminal in Sumner County will be merchandised through the company's grain marketing and logistics partner, Team Marketing Alliance.

TMA is wholly owned by six Kansas cooperatives: Farmers Cooperative Elevator Co., Halstead; Cooperative Grain and Supply, Hillsboro; MKC, Moundridge; Farmers Cooperative, Nickerson; Central Prairie Cooperative, Sterling; Mid-West Fertilizer, Paola and Producer Ag LLC, Moundridge. Between them, the co-ops own 48 country elevator facilities for the handling of bulk grain and two rail terminals, one at Canton and the newly opened terminal at Milan in Sumner County.

All profits earned by TMA during the year are passed back to the six local cooperatives at year-end. During the year, a put-through charge is paid to each elevator for bushels handled, along with storage. A five-member board made up of the local cooperative managers makes all board decisions. An associate board member is also assigned from each cooperative's own board.

Chief Operating Officer Ted Schultz with TMA says that the new rail terminals offer an opportunity for marketing grain that can be loaded on rail cars for delivery to multiple markets, both domestic and exports.

He says grain storage in Kansas presents somewhat of a unique challenge because of the number of crops grown and the need to have separate commodity storage for each of them.

"We have wheat, canola, soybeans, corn and milo," he says. "You look up north where it is mostly just corn and beans, and it is a different world. We have to be able to keep all those commodities separate and figure out how to be prepared for which ones are going to grow over the next 10 to 15 years to be ahead of the storage and marketing demands."