In 2020, Ursa Farmers Coop will celebrate its 100th year serving farmers in western Illinois and eastern Missouri. Founded along the Mississippi River during the final year of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, the Illinois-based cooperative originally had just one grain elevator to serve its members, with enough capacity to store 23,000 bushels of grain. A century later, Ursa now operates facilities in 10 locations with more than 15 million bushels of storage.
Roger Hugenberg, who started with Ursa in 1994 and became general manager in 2014, notes that Ursa’s member farmers produce close to 30 million bushels during the fall harvest. That has forced Ursa to become extremely efficient at unloading, moving and shipping its members’ grain.
“With increased customer production and competition for their grain, we need to keep our facilities updated so we can unload our members’ trucks quickly,” says Hugenberg. “And we’ll need to keep evolving as our customers continue to grow and implement technology to harvest their fields faster, so we continue to capture market opportunities.”
Ursa has been a CoBank customer since the 1950s. The cooperative relies on a number of CoBank’s financial services, including seasonal lines of credit, term loans, leasing and cash management. Recently Ursa added interest rate risk management with a rate cap through CoBank to reduce its interest rate risk exposure.
I and my board take comfort in knowing that we have a strong lender in CoBank, which offers multiple products, and that we ultimately share in the bank’s success through patronage.
“Our business requires large amounts of capital and rides seasonal cash fluctuations, and although we believe in doing business locally, the local providers don’t have the size and expertise to handle our needs as CoBank does,” says Hugenberg. “I and my board take comfort in knowing that we have a strong lender in CoBank, which offers multiple products, and that we ultimately share in the bank’s success through patronage.”
“We’ve worked with Ursa through some difficult times in the commodity markets and through easier times when prices are strong,” says Derrick Waggoner, eastern region president with CoBank’s Regional Agribusiness Banking Group. “Our goal is always to offer the right products to benefit Ursa, wherever they are in the industry and economic cycle.”