(Photo above: Iowa farmers prepare feed for Florida)

It’s been a great year for many Iowa farmers — and a horrible year for most Florida farmers. Members of a farmer-owned co-op in western Iowa are sharing a little of their wealth by trucking one-hundred tons of soybean-based feed to Florida dairy farmers who suffered great losses during the recent bout of hurricanes. Nile Ramsbottom is an executive vice president of the West Central cooperative, based in Ralston.
Ramsbottom says it was “the very least we could do” to donate the product to those Florida dairy farmers who were devastated by the hurricanes. He recalls when donations poured into Iowa from around the country to help farmers, and everyone else, during the floods of ’93. Ramsbottom says this shipment of livestock feed to Florida is one little way Iowa farmers can help others.
Ramsbottom says “Anytime somebody has a devastating situation, it’s always good to try to share if you can. We all know that we never know when we may suffer something so it’s good to have good neighbors, even if they’re across the country away from us.” The one-hundred tons of high-nutrition feed was produced in Ralston, is valued around 20-thousand dollars and cost another five-thousand to ship. West Central has about 35-hundred Iowa members.