Beck’s Hybrids: Customer success drives seed facility expansion in Mount Pleasant, Iowa

A family-owned, farmer-led seed company is expanding an Iowa location to better meet its customers needs.

AUDIO: Daniel Ganz, Beck’s Hybrids


Beck’s Hybrids, a family-owned, retail seed company, is broadening its Mount Pleasant facility. Daniel Ganz, production location manager in Mount Pleasant, outlines the plan for expansion.

“We just walked through our warehouse facility, (which we are) getting final touches on. (There is) some additional warehouse space to store packaged product and new docks have been put in as well. That will allow us to hold a little more seed, which we’ll need. We had a pretty good crop this year and have a lot of products to offer customers this coming year,” Ganz said.

Ganz says the Mount Pleasant facility has seen a lot of growth within the past four years. He adds the new developments will help Beck’s Hybrids better serve its customers in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. Ganz talks about what this looks like from a product perspective.

“We still haven’t maxed out the capacity of what this facility can handle. This year we’re going to run two processing shifts for the first time to get more products on the floor. This year we should get a little over a million units packaged between corn and soybeans, where this past year we were around 600,000,” Ganz said.

Additional product will contain new technologies, such as Poncho®/VOTiVO® 2.0.

“We’ve been putting Poncho®/VOTiVO® on products for a lot of years. Last year, we started 2.0 on some of our newer products, and saw good performance. This year we’re putting it on every single bag that we send out, so if you purchase a bag of Beck’s seed next year, it will have Poncho®/VOTiVO® 2.0 and our new nematicide,” Ganz said.

“Another thing we’re doing new this year is our Freedom Plus™ soybeans – the first soybeans that have both the Liberty trait and glyphosate tolerant trait in them,” Ganz said. “So as weed control continues to be more of a challenge due to resistant weeds, that’s another tool in the toolbox that growers with have.”

Beck’s Hybrids continually looks for the right, available product to apply to its seed. Ganz says farmer success is top of mind in the selection process and every day.