Alumni Profile: Jim Anderson, BS ’85

Turning seed-corn waste into want

By TOM CAMPBELL

The end of August just may be Jim Anderson’s favorite time of year. Anderson, BS ’85, has been on the road since May. His spirits are as low as his reserve of clean clothes. But it’s the end of August. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and nearer.

His company, Millennium Agricultural Services, has contracted 15,000 acres of seed corn stretching from Texas to Wisconsin. Millennium removes the male rows from fields of seed corn prior to harvest.

Starting in the Rio Grande River Valley of Texas at the end of May, Anderson and his crew have steadily worked their way north, working from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week.

The August portion of his schedule allows him to leave behind a series of nameless motels in faceless towns and return to his Illinois farm.

But then he heads to Wisconsin for September and October, and he’ll return to Texas for November before calling it quits for the year.

“I love seeing the country, and this job certainly lets me do that,” Anderson says. “But I really do miss my family. Plus, coming home lets me catch up on my laundry.”

Being on the road for six months at a time has given a small-town boy (there were 26 people in his high school graduating class) a chance to see the world.

“Had I just stayed in Newman, Illinois, I would have only seen two crops: corn and beans,” says Anderson. “But this year alone I have seen more than 30 different crops, not to mention mountain lions, snakes, floods and a hurricane.”

Anderson’s silage harvester cuts and chops the seed corn’s male rows, which are used as livestock feed.

But the crop that pays the bills for Anderson and James Young, his business partner, farming neighbor and longtime friend, is seed corn.

Millennium Agricultural Services provides a seed corn male-row removal service for 10 different seed corn companies.

What makes Millennium unique is it completely destroys the male plant, so there is no chance of cross-plant contamination. The plant is chopped into feed and sold to cattle producers by the truckload.

“Completely destroying the male row is more important now,” Anderson says, “because of the increasing number of genetically engineered varieties.”

Rolling over the male row does not always guarantee destroying the plant. Plus, simple mathematics indicate knocking down every fifth row wastes 20 percent of each field.

“When we can take that fifth row and turn it into a quality feed product, everybody wins,” Anderson says. “Seed companies save money on male-row destruction and have a pure seed field. Cattle feeders can lower their feed costs, and we can stick a dime or two in our own pockets.”

The difficult part is matching up the seed corn companies looking to have their male seed corn rows cut with feedlots looking to buy the silage Millennium takes out of the field (anywhere from 1.5 to 3 tons per acre).

If the silage is not harvested at the correct time, the moisture level — and quality — is reduced.

“That’s why timing is so important,” Anderson says. “We have to cut when the seed corn companies want us and then find a market for the silage.”

When they can’t find a market for their product, they simply open the back gates on the machines and dump the silage back into the cornfields as ground cover.

It’s Young’s job to see that doesn’t happen too often.

Working as the advance man one town ahead of Anderson’s cutting crew, Young works the phones, setting up accommodations for the crew and finding parts for the equipment and customers for the silage.

The machines cut the corn plants at 65–70 percent moisture (it varies slightly, depending on the customer), leaving enough ground cover of roots and stalks to minimize post-harvest erosion.

Anderson and Young had each produced seed corn on their own farms for more than 20 years. They knew there was a need for the service they now provide under the umbrella of Millennium Agricultural Services. It just took a while for them to figure out how to make money at it.

Between the winter of 2002 and the spring of 2003, Anderson and Young had countless conversations about how they would run their company.

They even had detailed discussions on what they would name their company.

“We each came up with a list of 20 different names, and we finally settled on Millennium,” Anderson says with a laugh. “But if we had to do it all over again, I think we’d both come up with something that’s a little easier for people to spell.”

Millennium contracted 10,000 acres in 2003, but it wasn’t easy, or fast.

“Last year, the machines were very slow and they were overheating all the time.” Anderson says that can be a real problem, particularly in Texas, where the thermometer has reached 133 degrees.

“During the winter of 2003, we spent quite a bit of time in the shop,” says Anderson. “We added cleaning screens and enclosures to the fronts of the machines, and that cut down on the overheating. Then we added a hydraulic pump to each cutting tool. Now we’re running about 300 percent faster through the field than we did last year.”

Which is why they expect to cut 15,000 acres this year without increasing labor costs.

Despite spending six months on the road a year, Anderson is still able to run his family farm operation, thanks to a unique partnership he formed with six neighboring farmers.

“In 2000, we all got together and formed the J-Bar-K Corporation to save machinery and labor costs,” Anderson explains.

“As individual farmers, we found that we didn’t have enough equipment to effectively farm the 6,000 acres in the corporation. But as a group, we have everything we need.”

For Anderson, that includes having enough time to run Millennium Agricultural Services.

The fleet of three male-row silage harvesters, named Sally, Gonzo and Fiddler, were built in Illinois with John Deere cabs, Cummins diesel engines, and price tags over $200,000 each.

The machines are built on the same chassis used by detasseling and spraying crews but are modified to fit varying row width and planting configurations.

Anderson is doing most of the research and development for the manufacturer while he is on the road.

“We hit the ground running back in 2003,” Anderson says. “We’re kind of making up the rules as we go along.”

Anderson has found each day on the road to be different from the one before, whether it’s finding a place to eat, a place to buy parts for the equipment, or just a place to do laundry.

“It certainly is a challenge,” Anderson says. “You name it, and we’ve seen it out here. We’ve had accidents, machines have gotten stuck, and finding parts is sometimes impossible.”

Anderson has learned to travel with a fully stocked parts trailer to keep Sally, Gonzo and Fiddler running on schedule.

Anderson and Young have serious plans for Millennium’s future expansion.

“We’re looking into expanding into Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota, but to do that, we would have to add another crew,” says Anderson. “We’ll sit down this winter, crunch some numbers and see what we want to do.”

They are also looking into starting a cattle feeding operation near their Newman, Ill., headquarters. And why not? They only have to look at each other as sources for all of the feed they would ever need.

Contact Anderson at jima@newman.net