By Marie Meis
Staff Writer
The town has been able to watch Central Valley Ag’s grain site grow and grow these past few months and Keith Borer gave some insight into what is all happening on the West side of Elgin. The most recent construction site and the largest is the building of two new grain bins. While one is already high in the air, the other is starting to go up this week.
The bins
Both will be 132 feet high with a diameter of 62 feet. This allows them to hold 350,000 bushels of corn with a total of 700,000 bushel capacity being added to the site. They are replacing two older, much smaller bins that had been deemed condemned because of foundation problems.
“Everyone that comes here knows it slows down during soybean harvest,” Borer said. In order to change that slow pace, a new dump pit has been added with the bins that holds 430 bushels and can dump 16,000 bushels an hour. The existing South dump pit is around 100 bushel capacity that allows 10,000 bushels per hour. During peak harvest, farmers will be able to dump 26,000 bushels in an hour now.
“We’re confident it’ll help the farmers get more done and we hope to service people from a wider area,” Borer said.
The South side elevator will continue to be used as it has in the past. The existing North side elevator will remain but won’t be used very often. Because of it’s smaller size and slower speed, CVA will work to utilize the other two elevators first.
Adding the bins and elevator to the north side will tie into the feed mill. Currently, the feed mill is able to produce around 6,200 tons a month of mixed feed using 150,000 bushel of corn. This will increase to around 7,800 ton a month of mixed feed and 180,000 to 200,000 bushel of corn each month, according to CVA’s estimates.
CVA also introduced a second scale during the last harvest, Borer said, “I believe we’ll see that work better for harvest number two. It’ll be smoother and work better.”
And another welcome site to CVA employees is the updated office space. Employees were able to move in February and 11 people occupy offices there now.
“Transportation accounting is all under one roof here now. We increased how many people office here and have a modern space,” Borer explained.
History of CVA in Elgin
In 1904, The Elgin Elevator Company began operation, where CVA can trace it’s roots back to. In 1919 it was purchased by Farmers Cooperative Exchange and through mergers, Elgin’s CVA was formed in 2003. To think back to 1904 where it all started, it’s clear it’s taken a lot of change and innovation to get where they are now. CVA is constantly changing and updating to meet the needs of the farmers they serve. The new office, added scale and construction of new bins all show the growth and changes of the cooperative.
“We hope to grow with our producers. We need to be faster and more efficient to serve them,” Borer told.
