2015 Class Announced

DTN/The Progressive Farmer Honors America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers

Dan Miller
By  Dan Miller , Progressive Farmer Senior Editor
DTN/The Progressive Farmer Ag Summit 2014 young farmers (left to right) Ben Hendrix, Jeffery Reznicek, Chris Zenker, Kevin Renfroe, Andrew Miller. (DTN/Progressive Farmer photo by Jim Patrico)

CHICAGO (DTN) -- DTN/The Progressive Farmer added five new honorees to its America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers program. The class of 2105 was introduced Tuesday during a DTN/The Progressive Farmer Ag Summit lunchtime event held in their honor.

Entering its sixth year, the program recognizes young farmers and ranchers who are building successful and innovative agricultural businesses. The award also recognizes the work they do to promote agriculture and have a positive impact in their communities. The 2015 class joins 21 past honorees.

Here are the newest members of the America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers program:

Ben Hendrix, 32, Haigler, Nebraska

Hendrix is the chief financial officer of Progressive Agricultural Management, Inc., and Circle 3 Farms, LLC. The core of this irrigated operation resides in Yuma County in northeastern Colorado. The crop rotation consists of corn, light red kidney beans and popcorn.

Pro-Ag accounts for about 5% of U.S. kidney bean production. A customer eating red beans and rice in a Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen restaurant is consuming Pro-Ag kidney beans. The popcorn crop is direct-marketed to Mexico, where there is strong and growing demand for the snack food. It is a business Hendrix expects will soon increase several times over.

"Pro-Ag has an 'all-of-the-above' attitude toward business opportunities," Hendrix said. "We spend considerable time thinking strategically. 'Because we've always done it that way' isn't heard on our farm. We are always open to new partnerships that can prove to be mutually beneficial."

An overarching philosophy driving Pro-Ag is that this is a business that will develop the capacity and capabilities to take advantage of new enterprise opportunities. For example, Pro-Ag purchases the planting and harvesting equipment unique to the production of kidney beans while foregoing the purchase of a corn planter, a piece of equipment that does not provide Pro-Ag with a unique capability among all corn growers.

Ben is married to Heather and they have a young daughter, Kate.

Andrew Miller, 31, Odem, Texas

Miller has put a unique structure to his farming operation near Odem, Texas. He operates a 6,000-acre custom farming business alongside his 5,000-acre, row-crop enterprise. "While the idea is to make sure that all the endeavors are profitable, I have always wanted the farm to be the bread and butter, and the custom farming to support it, to get there quicker," Miller said.

The custom farming business is a full-service operation structured to give landowners the ability to run a row-crop operation, but not worry about day-to-day decisions. The operation builds natural economies of scale.

"Through our [customer] relationships, they get all the technology and profitability per acre of an 11,000-acre farmer," Miller said. The custom business includes a marketing component. "It gives us quite a bit of selling power," he added.

Miller is building his own, proprietary data-collection system to more efficiently tap into the potential of precision agriculture. His wife, Stacy, with a background in business statistics, is key to the system's development. "We want to use our data to get more efficient and push our yields," he said.

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Andrew and Stacy have two children, Dorothy Grace and Harlan David. They are expecting a third, a baby girl, in early January.

Kevin Renfroe, 32, Huntingdon, Tennessee

Renfroe has an inborn fondness for his family's farming heritage. He was the only one of five grandsons who heard the call to come back to the corn, cotton and soybean operation. Miller earned an agri-business degree from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. After graduation, he went to work for his father as an employee. But soon, Renfroe was offered the opportunity to buy a quarter-share of the operation.

Renfroe Farms, headquartered in Carroll County in northwest Tennessee, has gown many times over in the years since its inception by Renfroe's grandfather and grandmother, Garvin and Virginia Renfroe. Renfroe Farms is 5,500 acres today, running 35 miles from end to end, and operates in two counties.

"If we can't grow the farm by adding land, then we will by production," Renfroe said. The farm is producing at peak 1,100-pound cotton per acre, 250-bushel irrigated white corn for a premium, an occasional contract of non-GMO corn for export and 60-bushel soybeans.

Renfroe has been instrumental in upgrading the farm's capabilities with GPS and variable rate technologies. The farm also boasts 900 acres under irrigation and a new 375,000-bushel grain facility.

The irrigation investment was critical. "We are never more than seven days away from drought," Renfroe said. The pivots protect the crops and have improved yield by 50 to 100 bushels per acre. His goal is to put one-third of the farm under irrigation.

On-farm storage buys marketing flexibility. With the new granary, the Renfroes begin fall harvest earlier than they were once able to take advantage of early-season premiums in the market.

Kevin is newly married this past summer to Ashley.

Jeff Reznicek, 33, Aliceville, Alabama

When Reznicek earned his civil engineering degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, his plan was to settle down in his new home and begin his career with a surveying firm. Then, he got a call from his uncle Joe Reznicek in Alabama. Would Jeff be willing to move to Alabama with the opportunity to earn an ownership position in Joe's Cow Creek Ranch? At that time, Cow Creek was the largest registered Brangus and Ultrablack seed stock operation in the U.S.

Reznicek accepted the offer and moved to Aliceville less than 30 days before Cow Creek's large annual bull sale. Forty-five days after Jeff arrived at the ranch, his Uncle Joe was diagnosed with cancer. He died 14 months later. The responsibility of the ranch fell to Jeff and his Aunt Joy, Joe's wife.

Reznicek could have headed home to Illinois. His aunt expected him to leave. Instead, he stayed. Operating today as Reznicek Ranch, LLC, the business is devoted to high-quality genetics, premium cow-management services and enterprise innovation.

The ranch's grass resource is the key to success, Reznicek said. He has come to believe that small pasture units would best sustain the operation. Large pastures were divided with permanent fencing. Reznicek also no-till drilled winter annuals -- ryegrass, wheat and triticale -- and installed temporary, solar-powered electric fences to maximize winter grazing.

The new grazing program produced a profitable result. The ranch's stocking rate has grown by 50 cow/calf units as it rebuilds toward a goal of 1,000 cows. In recent years, the ranch has run up to 90 of its cows on grass, year-round without hay or supplements. Reznicek's goal is to get 60% or more of the herd through winter without feeding hay.

Jeff is married to Erin. They have a son, Cade August.

Chris Zenker, 35, Gackle, North Dakota

Zenker is a fifth-generation farmer who learned a hard lesson at a young age. His father Joel was traveling to referee a football game in the fall of 1988 when he had a terrible accident that left Joel paralyzed from the neck down. Chris was 9. The family operation, based near Gackle, North Dakota, evolved in the years following the accident, while Chris's appetite for grain farming grew. But a farming career was not a given for Zenker.

"I was going to have to start my own farm. I didn't have my dad to back me, or his land to farm," Zenker said.

By the spring of his freshman year in college, Chris had rented 350 acres from his grandfather. A year later, he rented another 450 acres. He soon added soybeans to the grain operation, a crop not then grown in south-central North Dakota. But it was a fortuitous move, as soybeans soon became an important cash crop in the area. By 2001, Zenker added to his operation the 1,700 acres offered him by a retiring farmer.

Zenker Farms, Inc. is now a 6,000-acre business, counting all the ground Chris and his brother Mike farm in a loose partnership. It is growing toward 10,000 acres, producing a 50-50 rotation of corn and soybeans on 18 inches of rain per year. Corn yields range from 40 bushels per acre on the thinner, sandy soils to 200 bpa in the richer bottoms. Zenker Farms average yield was 130 bpa of corn in 2014.

The farm has gone from zero on-farm storage in 2006 to 260,000 bushels. Chris and a neighbor added another 200,000 bushels of storage when they purchased the formerly closed, four-bin elevator in Gackle. "I'll spend money to make money," he said. "But I need to know where to spend it." Storage was a good move. Because of the North Dakota oil boom, rail traffic has become clogged with tanker cars to the detriment of grain shipments. The on-farm storage creates for Chris the value of time. He can hold his corn and soybeans for a more favorable basis.

Chris is married to Christina. They have three children, Allison, 9, Brenden, 5 and Deziray, 2.

Nominees for America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers must be 40 years old or younger, manage at least 500 acres and/or have interest in a 50-head cow herd or larger.

Nominations for the class of 2016 will be accepted beginning Feb. 1, 2015. Applications are available by email request sent to dan.miller@dtn.com, by phone at 205-414-4736 or as a PDF downloaded from the America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers web page found at www.dtnpf.com. All nominations must be postmarked by Friday, June 5, 2015.

The new class of America's Best Young Farmers and Ranchers are profiled in the February 2015 issue of The Progressive Farmer.

Five videos, one about each honoree, are available at www.youtube.com/pfmagvideos

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Dan Miller