Carroll, Iowa
October 1, 2007
Lawhon Midwest, LLC, a subsidiary
of Lawhon Farm Services of McCrory, Arkansas, announced today
its decision to close its business. Its customers better know
Lawhon Midwest, a marketer of corn and soybean products, by its
well-recognized brand name,
Stauffer Seeds.
Parent company Lawhon Farm Services has lived through its share
of unfortunate events in recent years. Its Beltwide Cotton
Genetics division, started in 2002, was well received as a
newcomer by the farming community, but a near complete shift in
the demand for a new technology caused a large surplus of
cottonseed inventory with no demand. A subsequent sale of that
company came to an abrupt halt when one of Beltwide’s largest
competitors became available for purchase. This left the bidder
an option they took advantage of and subsequently Lawhon closed
the doors in December 2006 and faced a sizable loss.
In August of 2006, the nation’s rice crop was found to be
contaminated with an unapproved, genetically altered event
LL601, prompting Europe and other nations to stop accepting US
rice. Two of Lawhon’s largest selling rice seed varieties were
also found to have been contaminated, even though Lawhon was
never involved in testing or growing the unapproved version.
Lawhon lost hundreds of thousands of bushels of its best
sellers. Class action lawsuits by American rice farmers against
the LL601 event owner are pending.
This past spring, Lawhon’s Delta King soybean company, the third
largest soybean provider in the Midsouth, experienced a sizable
decrease in anticipated sales as farmers moved away from
soybeans and into corn and other crops. On September 10 this
year, the Delta King soybean business was transferred to Cullum
Seeds, who markets soybeans under the Armor brand, leaving a
restructured Lawhon Farm Services with a contract wildlife and
production and processing business for other companies.
Lawhon had hoped to attract another company to acquire its
profitable Stauffer business to save the company and its
employees, but time simply ran out. “We had a buyer for the
company, but the offer was significantly less than the value of
the brand and we were not able to reach acceptable terms,” said
Noal Lawhon, company president. “Another company was seriously
looking at our Stauffer brand but got a late start in the
process and may easily have taken another two months to
complete. We were faced with a situation where we could have
continued to take orders and early payments from customers for
2008 sales, but possibly not be able to make delivery if the
sale of Stauffer did not go through. Taking a risk like that
with my customers’ money is not something I was willing to do.”
“Our people are among the best in the business and none of them
will have difficulty finding opportunities elsewhere,” said
Craig Williams, general manager of Lawhon Midwest and the
Stauffer brand from its Carroll, Iowa, office. “But for most of
us, this was more than a job, it was a tight knit family that
worked well as a team and that’s going to be near impossible to
replace. This is a sad day for our customers and the farming
community as well. We didn’t just talk about providing our
customers with the best product possible, we lived it. The loss
of the Stauffer brand is the loss of one more possible choice
our customers have in an industry that has seen an unprecedented
amount of consolidation recently.”
Employees were notified on Monday, September 24 that the
business would close effective the following Friday. Williams
and one other employee will stay on for a few months to ensure
an orderly closing of the business and disposal of assets. |
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