Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 8862 • Between Turnrows National seed companies such as Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer and DuPont employ seed breeders who work to develop better varieties of row crops. The days when land-grant universities developed varieties of seed that farmers could plant, harvest and save for next year are for the most part gone. Traited seeds with patented genetics are the industry standard today. Billions of dollars are spent in research and development in an attempt to come up with higher yielding seed with herbicide tolerant traits. Once developed, these seeds are grown in trials against other varieties and a few are selected for national production. Since climate and soil conditions across the farm belt are so variable, companies must choose varieties that perform the best in the widest possible geographies. What Armor Seed and other re- gional seed companies have been able to do is take the data sets from field trials and search them for varieties that were not selected for national production, but perform better in their specific geographies. They then license the genetics for these varieties and grow them for sale to farmers in their sales area. Mid-South Farm Credit’s James McJunkins remembers, “They (Armor own- ers) had this idea that there wasn’t enough margin in just cleaning seed or in selling name-brand seed; and that they needed to get into the branding themselves. I was totally unfamiliar with that. I remember this huge computer printout that Kelly had with these rows and rows of numbers on it. He could flip through the pages and tell you about the varieties and the numbers that went with them. It was obvious that he knew what he was talking about, so I started to really pay attention. There was a learning curve for us (Farm Credit) because we needed to know how this all worked. This was the idea in its infant stages of finding the varieties, branding the seed, then marketing and selling the seed to farmers. What was most impressive to me was they understood not only the agronomy part of it, but also the business side … what mar- gins the variety was going to generate, and what kind of marketing expense would Showing gratitude is a cornerstone for the Armor culture. It’s made apparent in this billboard in the fall of 2013.