Click here to contact key Topics employees. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Brandon Schueler likes shopping Fort Wayne, Ind., malls with his mom. But he really likes shopping with his dad at the Pre-harvest Field Show at Beck's Superior Hybrids. About 5,000 people from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan placed orders for spring planting and participated in the research discussions, field tours and family events during the Thursday-Sunday show.
Many seed companies host field tours and invite customers to see what kind of crops they can expect.
Only a handful in the country do it to the magnitude of the Beck's show for the past 30-plus years, said Lee Rulon, the company's marketing director. This year's field show offered 11 tours that gave detailed explanations and hands-on demonstrations of tillage practices, seed performance, Beck's facilities and the company's agricultural research. One thing that makes the Beck's show unique is a tribute to how Francis and Pauline Beck started the company as a family business in 1937. Their children and grandchildren keep family part of the annual show. The tours and discounts brought Curt Clouser and his dad from Swayzee, Ind., to the field show Thursday, but the family activities brought Clouser, his wife and two children back to the show Saturday.