All Points looking forward to the new year

“Let me start off by telling all of you that you are a member of a strong, well-managed company.”

Leon Westbrock, guest speaker and Vice President of Petroleum for Cenex Harvest States, started his speech by recognizing the people, patrons and board of directors at the 9th All Points Cooperative Expo, Annual Meeting and Seminar.

Westbrock discussed how the economy and the price of gas has helped and hurt grain producers in the last couple of years.

The message boiled down to the age-old business rule of supply and demand.

Westbrock explained that as improvements in the quality of life in Southeast Asia, coupled with a boom of online stock exchange trading and a surge in the housing markets, crude oil prices shot up.

Once countries like China and India backed down, online trading started to level off and the finance market - mainly the suffering housing market - crashed, crude oil prices dropped.

“When the man goes down, everyone goes down,” Westbrock said. “It’s kind of like if the U.S. gets a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia.”

Westbrock then said that innovation was the key in staying ahead of trends like a fluctuating market.

“Profit will always follow the most efficient ways of production,” he said.

He said right now, some companies are trying to formulate a type of corn through genetic work that would have high tolerances to draught and strong winds.

“Right now, if countries in Asia increased their calorie intake by 1,000 calories, the world would run out of food,” Westbrock said. “If we could produce this high tolerance type of corn, it could take the place of cotton fields in the arid places where corn doesn’t grow.”

General Manager and President of All Point Cooperative, Ed Foster, spoke after Westbrock and the first thing he did was congratulate everyone involved with All Points on what he called a “very successful year.”

“It means a lot to have this much participation,” Foster told the crowd, “we could not be prouder of the year that we have had.”

All Points year has been a successful by any account even in the face of a struggling market. Total sales for the cooperative was almost $188 million, a $75 million dollar increase from last year, before income taxes.

Foster attributed this result to three reasons: the patrons, the board of directors and a little bit of luck.

“It never hurts to have a little,” he said of luck. “When you start to have a little, then you can make your own luck.”

About the only bad news Foster could think of was the grain elevator explosion that happened at 3:25 a.m., Nov. 20. However, Lady Luck was apparently smiling on the cooperative that morning as well.

“Thank goodness, he was in the right place at the right time,” Foster said of Larry Moses, the worker hurt in the explosion. “If that were to have happened at 3:25 in the afternoon, we would have lost a lot of lives and it would have been a real catastrophe.”

Foster thanked surrounding grain elevators that were able to help out during the crisis, and said the Gothenburg elevator could be up to fully operational status by this fall.

“This year was very successful,” Foster said. “We must keep looking forward.

In other business, Bruce Rickertsen, Seth Gruber and Ed Oberg were elected to the All Points Cooperative Board of Directors.

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