By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

YALE, Iowa, August 18, 2007 – When you’re pedaling toward this town on the Raccoon River Valley Trail in this late summer, you suddenly realize that the local skyline has been altered. You don’t just see the Yale water tower and the concrete silos of the Farmers Cooperative Co. grain elevator up above the trees, you now also see a huge new gleaming-steel grain bin.

It’s being completed in time for this fall’s harvest, and it will hold 700,000 bushels. A whopper of a grain bin, for sure, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen.

Thousands of trail users will see it up close — it’s just a few dozen feet east of the trail — when they come pedaling through the town of 287 people.

Now, if you don’t live in the countryside, you are probably unaware of just how much construction of new grain holding facilities is happening on farms and at grain elevators across the region. Predictions of an all-time record corn crop of 2.51 billion bushels in Iowa this year, along with soaring corn prices being driven-up by new demand for ethanol production, is making individual farmers and the grain cooperatives want as much storage space as possible.

I was thinking about that on a ride this weekend, while I was also noticing the first hint of fall color in the corn and soybean fields. The harvest will be in full swing all around us, within a month.

And that reminded me that a unique feature of the RRVT — particularly when compared to urban trails — is that it travels through one of the most fertile and productive agricultural areas in the world. We who ride on it pedal right alongside farmers using stunningly-big machines to harvest corn, beans and a few other crops. Since the trail is on a former railroad route that served the grain elevators, we also get close-up views of all the action at those huge facilities on harvest days and nights. We ride near large livestock operations.

And yet, it’s a good bet that more than half the people enjoying themselves on the RRVT are almost clueless about what’s really happening in those fields, farm buildings and grain elevators that are so close to the trail.

How many of us would know, for example, that the Yale grain elevator is one of 48 locations that the Farmers Cooperative Co. operates from its headquarters in Farnhamville, Iowa? The company, with 5,800 members and 350 employees, is “the largest farmer-owned local ag cooperative in Iowa,” as the company’s Internet site points out, with its members farming 1.4 million acres. In this one year, the company announced it is adding enough new grain storage space either in bins or on the ground to hold 6 million more bushels of corn than it could previously.

When you pedal north on the trail in Greene County, you now see seven wind turbines north of Jefferson. We should explain them, along with the fact that one of the nation’s experts on wind energy (maybe it was predestined because his name is Tom Wind) is building a new home on the farm where he grew up a half-mile east of the trail in the southern part of the county.

We are pedaling adjacent to the fields of two of the world’s real innovators in soybean production — Stine Seed in Dallas County and West Central Cooperative in Greene County. Too few realize that West Central has been a global leader in development of bio-diesel fuel from soybeans.

And who wouldn’t be interested in knowing the family stories on the century farms the trail passes?

Fascinating stories like that, I think, present a special opportunity and challenge for us involved in the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association.

We are about a third of the way to completion of our new $50,000 signage project, which is placing new trailhead and informational signs in all our RRVT communities as well as mileage signs up and down the trail.

When we complete that, the next step we would like to take is to work with farmers and those involved in agribusiness to develop a coordinated series of interpretive signs that would be placed at key locations all along the trail. They would explain the farm operations in terms that everybody can understand, making sense of the sophisticated technology, stewardship, animal husbandry and management practices that are happening so close at hand. They would include photographs and illustrations.

We have a few interpretive signs on the RRVT explaining some historical sites and natural areas along the trail, and we need more of them. But so far, we have no signs explaining agriculture or the fascinating other businesses that are neighbors to the RRVT.

It seems to me we’re missing what would not only be an opportunity to enhance the public’s understanding of agriculture and business in our area, but also a way to enhance the experience of being on the trail. Adding some unforced learning opportunities to a recreational experience seems a win-win situation.

If you’re involved in those farming or business enterprises and would like to work with us on interpretive signage, please be in touch with us by phone at (515) 386-5488 or by e-mail at info@raccoonrivervalleytrail.org.

Article Published: 08-18-2007