More Together Synergy between producers and their co-ops forges success. By Patricia Miller O ne farmer can put up a grain bin or silo, but bring farmers together through their cooperative and they can build a grain shuttle, feed mill, river terminal or processing plant; buy a refi nery; open global markets; and infl uence policy. In tandem, producers and their cooperatives create more — more value, more opportunity, more impact — together. Kurt Duxbury knows fi rsthand about creating more together. In 2002, his father-in-law, a Weyauwega, Wis., cheesemaker, bought the neighbor’s 300-cow dairy farm to keep it from being subdivided and asked Duxbury to run it. A local school principal, Duxbury made the leap into dairy management. When Duxbury and his wife Anna became partners in the farm in 2004, they went into expansion mode. At Quantum Dairy, Duxbury and 42 employees milk 2,400 cows, raise heifers in partnership with seven other local dairy producers and farm 3,500 acres. He relies on CHS Larsen Cooperative in Weyauwega to help keep everything humming. > Your CHS Connection 7