45 years of change in the wheat industry

You might say Don Schieber’s seed business and High Plains Journal grew up together.

For 45 years, his company, Schieber Seeds, has been growing, selling and cleaning seed wheat from his home base in Ponca City, Oklahoma. And High Plains Journal was there from the beginning.

“I got started in the seed business in 1973,” Schieber said. “I started growing seed wheat. Back then, TAM 101 was the new one, so I got some of that to grow for seed.” He soon realized that it would be more efficient to have his own seed cleaner, and so he turned to the HPJ Classifieds.

“Looking in the Journal, I found a used seed cleaner in Salina,” he said. “I bought it and started cleaning wheat for neighbors.” That business grew to two seed cleaners he and a neighbor mounted on trailers for portability, again sourcing the components in the pages of HPJ. He grew a small side business of building and selling portable seed cleaners, while marketing through HPJ’s classifieds.

From his early years to now, the wheat seed business has changed. It’s not just that the equipment got bigger, more efficient and more advanced. It’s that wheat breeders have improved varieties for the growers and for the end users. 

“The technology is there for 100-bushel-plus (an acre) wheat, the genetics are there,” he said. “The National Wheat Yield Contest winner was 212 bushels out of Washington. In the 1960s, my dad got a plaque for the highest wheat yield in Oklahoma, and it was 62 bushels.

“We have GPS and Autosteer and more things that can save farmers seed costs and minimize loss,” Schieber continued. Airseeder rigs can improve planting accuracy, and combines today do a much better job of thrashing than when he started, he added.

Those are not the only changes Schieber has seen in 45 years of business. From the Russian wheat embargo, to the 1980s farm crisis, to North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade agreements, and multiple farm bills, in the pages of the Journal he’s read about how politics at the local and federal levels can affect farmers. As his business grew, so did his desire to give his time to building the wheat industry, so he joined Oklahoma Wheat Growers and also served as an Oklahoma Wheat Commissioner, eventually serving a term as the chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates and traveling the world to promote U.S. wheat to foreign buyers.

USW was formed in 1980 as merger between Western Wheat Associates and Great Plains Wheat Market Development Association. Those two founding organizations were started in the late 1950s—at about the same time the Journal was just getting started—to expand international markets for the vast surplus of wheat grown in the Plains and the Pacific Northwest. As chairman, Schieber saw firsthand how the efforts to educate foreign buyers about how to purchase and utilize U.S.-grown wheat built market demand, which stabilizes farm prices. All the while the Journal was there, sharing the story with other growers.

The future is likely to bring even more and greater changes, and at a faster pace than what he’s seen in 45 years, but Schieber said he sees the next generation becoming adaptable to that change. He is wary that farm expenses have increased, but prices for commodities have become stagnant.

“I could buy a John Deere 4020 in the mid- to late-60s, brand new, for $7,000 to $8,000,” he reminisced. “That’s not even a down payment on a new one now.”

Still, Schieber has hope for agriculture in the High Plains, because the area is the grocery store for not just America but also the world.

“As long as we can continue to grow good crops, and we have help exporting our crops, we’ll be in good shape,” he said.

And the Journal will be right there to help the next generation build their businesses.

Jennifer M. Latzke can be reached at 620-227-1807 or [email protected].