The farmers are among a local group who helped develop a site to recruit Frito-Lay's new 3.2 million bushel processing plant. They get preference when contracts are written in January and February. Not everyone vacuums the control panel for a grain dryer, but Jack Soller does.
Cleanliness brings better prices.
National Starch has its own Custom Farm Seed business. Here a researcher checks an ear for disease lesions. The Wichita-based energy company, Koch Industries, also has a stake in ExSeed. Miles also has an interest in ExSeed Genetics, L.L.C., founded in 1994 to breed its own high-tech specialty hybrids and market them to food and industrial processing companies and for export. This summer, ExSeed will plant 15 different types of corn, including high-oil for livestock feed and some genetically engineered hybrids, says president Mark Scholl, an Illinois farmer who helped form ExSeed.