New Seed Company Moves into Iowa

by | Oct 1, 2015 | 5 Ag Stories, News

(Mount Pleasant) — Seed corn fields are being harvested, very carefully as the final product is worth over $250 per bag. A new seed company has moved into Iowa with great hopes for growth.

Sonny Beck

President of Beck’s Hybrids Sonny Beck

Harvesters are combing the landscape in South East Iowa. They look like combines on the front but reveal by a rear elevator and wagon that they are picking ears for a specialized purpose.

Daniel Gantz is Production location manager for becks hybrids, an Indiana company that is growing corn in Iowa for the first year.

?So this was a very good year for us. Good conditions. Pollination time allowed for most of our fields to be pollinated well and produce a quality seed crop. Beck?s as a whole is around the 25,000-acre range and here at the Mount Pleasant location were producing 4,300 acres of seed corn,? Gantz said.

Seed corn processing

Beck’s employees check for bad ears as the belt continues to bring corn down the line.

Becks purchased a Pioneer Seed plant in Mount Pleasant last year. The facility built in 1983 was upgraded and is now handling both corn and soybeans with the first crop coming in.

Sonny Beck is president of Becks, which claims to be the largest independent family owned seed company in the country.

?Iowa has been so welcoming to us. It?s like where have you been all my life a good family owned company that has all of these seed choices from all the major breeding programs in the United States including your own. It has blown out our expectations. We have over 50 sales full time employees in Iowa right now,? Beck said.

Becks also broke ground this week on a distribution center and research facility near Colfax in Central Iowa.