Year: 2018
Holiday Hours
All MFA Oil offices will be closed on the following dates to allow our employees to enjoy time with their families: Thanksgiving – November 22, 2018 The day after Thanksgiving – November 23, 2018 Christmas Eve – December 24, 2018 Christmas – December 25, 2018 New Year’s Day – January […]
Choices – A Letter from Mark Fenner, MFA Oil President and CEO
The following column is written by Mark Fenner, president and CEO, and was originally published in the Fall 2018 issue of Momentum magazine. Choices. Don’t you love them? Whether it’s an ice cream flavor, a pair of jeans or the vehicle we drive, most of us like to have options. […]
MFA Oil Announces Patronage and Equity Distribution, Election of Three New Board Members
MFA Oil Company, a farmer-owned cooperative, announces it will pay a patronage dividend of $8.4 million to its membership.
Maze Masters
Since 2002, the Shryock family has carved fields of corn into imaginative mazes. Located conveniently on Interstate 70 just outside of Columbia, Mo., the rustic labyrinths have firmly established the Shryock’s Callaway Farms as an annual agritourism destination that draws thousands of visitors to the family’s fields each fall. The […]
Making the Most of Their Acres
Leffler Farms Inc. Focuses on Efficiency On the fringes of the Flint Hills of Kansas, Bill and Jacquelyne Leffler are five years into an unexpected partnership. The father and daughter duo raise corn, soybean, wheat and cattle near Americus, Kan., but Jacquelyne’s return to the farm was more happenstance than […]
Milkweed Plantings Needed to Restore Threatened Monarch Butterfly
Every autumn, millions of vibrantly colored monarch butterflies embark on an incredible mass migration. The remarkable trip takes the butterflies up to 3,000 miles, traveling as far south as central Mexico before that generation’s offspring return to the upper Midwest and Canada in the spring. The wonder of this natural […]
Proactive Tank Maintenance Key to Preserving Fuel Quality
Barry Oden knows his customers count on MFA Oil for high-quality fuel. The challenge he sees is helping them maintain that quality once it’s been delivered. “I see the analysis of every fuel sample that customers in my district send in to our lab for testing and too many have […]
Escalating Trade Tensions Continue to Weigh on Agricultural Exports
Farmers hoping for a quick resolution to the trade war between the United States and China may be kept waiting for the foreseeable future. The commercial conflict escalated when President Donald Trump instructed his administration to enact $200 billion of new tariffs on a wide array of Chinese goods by […]
Farm-to-Glass Distillery Embraces Heirloom Corn
Most corn grown in fields these days is selected chiefly for its yield potential, but other factors such as disease tolerance, standability and maturity are important considerations. While a focus on these traits has led to bin-bursting harvests through the Heartland, it leaves something to be desired for whiskey makers […]
‘Seed Destructor’ Technology Likely the Next Step in war on Weeds
For decades, the fight against weeds in Arkansas agriculture—barnyardgrass and Palmer amaranth, in particular—has been an ongoing war of attrition as weed populations gradually acquire resistance to one herbicidal chemistry after another. During this time, weed scientists and other experts with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture have […]
5 Questions with Marion Kertz
How would you describe your farming operation? My father got into farming in 1934 when he purchased a small parcel of land during the Great Depression. Our family has been farming the same area near Ste. Genevieve, Mo., ever since, and we now also farm across the river in Illinois. […]
Taking a Wider View
The energy market is full of questions these days. What is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) up to and has the cartel reestablished its relevance? How much of a factor is Russia playing? Where does the United States stand with its abundant shale oil production and new […]