Email: "Mid Iowa Growth sees serious success"
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By LARRY KERSHNER
Farm News news editor

By comparison to other regional economic development organizations, the nine-county Mid Iowa Growth Partnership is a fairly new entity, having organized just a few years ago. But it has already experienced serious successes.

The member counties have agreed to erase their statutory border lines when it comes to courting prospective manufacturers as a whole. ‘‘Ten to 15 years ago,’’ said Tom Grau, director of Pocahontas County Economic Development, ‘‘few would have dreamt that (governing entities) would come together in this way. It saves a lot of time.’’

With Fort Dodge as the lone exception, there are no towns bigger than 15,000 population in the nine-county area.

‘‘This is a diverse region,’’ explained Jim Patton, Webster County Extension director, a de facto non-voting member of the MIGP. Each of the member counties—Webster, Calhoun, Humboldt, Palo Alto, Kossuth, Hardin, Hamilton, Pocahontas and Wright — have different strengths and amenities, Patton explained, but they can all market their areas on the overall strength of the region.

‘‘We get along pretty well together,’’ Patton added. ‘‘Individually, none of us could market ourselves well enough to attract a new industry.’’

It’s also easier, Patton said, for a prospective business to deal with the proposals of a few groups, rather than with many.

Some of MIGP’s more recent successes include the development of two wind farms, the start of a large dairy, the creation of VeraSun ethanol plant in Fort Dodge and the creation of Tate & Lyle in Fort Dodge, a corn wet-milling facility manufacturing a variety of products.

PCED’s Grau noted that the developments are interrelated, even though the companies and their industries are vastly different from each other.

He pointed out that the 171 new wind turbines in the Pocahontas County area add enough new electric energy onto regional transmission lines to meet the demands of new and expanding dairies and corn wet- and dry-milling plants. Such developments are essential to Iowa, said Sen. Rich Olive, D-Story City, ‘‘because Iowa consumes 94 percent of all the energy it generates.’’

MIGP’s successes attracted Bill Northey, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, to meet with MIGP’s value-added ag committee last month in an effort to learn what makes the regionalized development group successful.

Grau also points with pride to the recent state-of-the-art facility upgrade by American Concrete.

‘‘They were looking for a new location. They aren’t a new business,’’ Grau said, ‘‘but we kept their jobs in this area. And in economic development, we know that its cheaper to retain jobs, than it is to create new ones.’’

Most of the MIGP members are representatives of city and county governments and economic development reps from various towns in the service area. Others who are invited to participate at the table include U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Development, Iowa State University Extension, MidAmerican Energy Co., Corn Belt Power Cooperative, plus soil and water conservation groups.

Regionalization is important, Grau said, because ‘‘we are in a whole brand new international scenario. We aren’t competing with Iowa Falls, we’re competing with China and India.’’

Future developments in sight?
Patton said that MIGP’s value-added ag committee is expecting to get a grant approved to study how to get a meat-cutting course established at either Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge or at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls. He said local meat lockers and grocery retailers are experiencing difficulty enticing young people to enter the processing industry. With more consumers demanding food grown in their own regions, having meat cutters at local lockers and grocery stores will be essential in the future, he said.

During his January meeting, Northey told the value-added ag committee that its future focus should include developing processing plants for niche ag markets including goat dairy milk, organic farming, winemaking and truck farming for fruits and vegetables.

For his area, Grau is hoping to see more dairy cattle operations created, and, eventually, a cheese processor. He’s also expecting to see additional wind turbines erected in 2009 or 2010 along the south side of Iowa Highway 7 within his county.

‘‘We’re trying to get done what we can get accomplished,’’ Grau said of MIGP. ‘‘We’re not trying to do 50 things at once.

‘‘Success builds on success. Although you have to keep the door open for the (possibility of attracting) the big plants, we also have to build success one dairy at a time, one wind farm at a time.’’

Contact Larry Kershner at (515) 573-2141 or kersh@farm-news.com

 

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