From 8 to 3 Tractor Companies (Tractor Overview)

Update: I found a timeline of tractor history.

Update: 9:16 video about the invention of the tractor

Update: one problem with consecutive years of bumper corn crops is that the price of corn is low so farmers are hurting. When farmers are hurting, farm manufactures are also hurting. This news about Case New Holland Industrial America laying off 70 more workers in Fargo, ND, was frustrating because they did not explain what that plant makes. But it did give me a name to Google to find www.cnhindustrial.com, which in turn lead to a locations page. There I learned that Fargo is one of two plants that make high-horsepower, four-wheel-drive tractors. And I learned that sometimes I drive within about 1000 feet of their headquarters. Three of their plants offer tours. More history on CNH and on J.I.Case, the man.

Otto's patent expired in 1889.

56:46 video @ 13:58

When I was a boy visiting my Grandfather's farm in the early 1960s, I would study his farm magazines. I noticed from the advertisements and by the equipment on the farms in the area that there were evidently eight tractor manufactures---John Deere, International Harvester, Ford, Minneapolis-Moline, Oliver, Massey Ferguson, and Allis-Chalmers. And there were companies such as New Holland, Gleaner, and New Idea that did not make tractors, but they did make farm implements such as self-propelled combines, feed grinders and hay forage equipment.

In the 1920s when many little tractors were needed to replace horses on small family farms, the market could support several manufactures. But the trend towards larger, and thus fewer, tractors and the farm recession of the 1980s reduced the number of brands, manufacturing plants, and companies. To provide a "road map" for the remainder of the post, I summarize the consolidations below.

• Ford + Sperry New Holland -> Ford New Holland
• J.I.Case + IH -> Case IH
• Case IH + New Holland + Fiat Industrial -> CNH Industrial but so far the Case IH and New Holland brands have been kept distinct
• Allis-Chalmers acquires Gleaner and then becomes Duetz-Allis in 1985 and is bought out by management in 1990 as AGCO
• Minneapolis-Moline + Oliver -> White Farm Equipment
• AGCO buys Hesston in 1991
• AGCO buys New Idea in 1993
• AGCO buys Massey Ferguson in 1994
• AGCO buys White Farm Equipment in 2001. But evidently this was the kind of purchase to get only dealers and customers. The White band name continues only on some planters. The Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline brands and factories had already pretty well disappeared.
• AGCO buys Caterpillar Agriculture Equipment Business in 2002 and brands it as Challenger
• John Deere remains John Deere

Actually, AGCO and CNH Industrial are global companies that have acquired additional companies in other countries, and John Deere has created joint ventures in other countries. For example, AGCO bought Fendt (Germany) in 1997 and Valtra (Finland) in 2004. And CNH has the Steyr brand in Europe. But I'm focusing on companies that sell in the United States.

Heritage Iron Magazine posted
going all the way back to 1964!!!
Jett Doolittle: The big 8! The 1960s were the best decade for agriculture equipment in my opinion.
Gideon Strydom: Ford, John Deere, Massey Ferguson, Farmall, Allis Chalmers, Minneapolis Moline, Case, Oliver
DL Durchholz shared
Look at those brands….

J. I. Case and IH

In 1984, Tenneco purchased the agricultural division of International Harvester and merged it with the J.I. Case assets that it had bought in 1967. Thus creating the brand Case IH:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/CaseIH_Logo.jpg/220px-CaseIH_Logo.jpg

Wikipedia has the following list of factory locations. I know Racine, Wisconsin was the town in which J.I Case was founded. I need to make a trip to Burr Ridge, IL I assume it is part of the IH heritage.

• Benson, Minnesota - Cotton Harvesters, Application Equipment
• Curitiba, Brazil - Farmall, Maxxum and Magnum Tractors
• Grand Island, Nebraska - Combines, Windrowers
• Fargo, North Dakota - Tractors
• Piracicaba, Brazil - Sugarcane harvesters, Sprayers, Coffee harvesters and Planters
• Racine, Wisconsin - Tractors
• Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Crop Production Equipment
• Sorocaba, Brazil - 2566, 7120, 8120 Combines
• St. Valentin, Austria - Tractors
• Goodfield, Illinois - Tillage Equipment
• New Holland, Pennsylvania - Round Balers
• TürkTraktör, Türkiye - Tractors
• New holland India Pvt limited - Tractors and harvesting equipment
• Burr Ridge, Illinois- Tractors

I also found a list of which models are made at which factory: http://www.tractordata.com/farm-tractors/tractor-brands/caseih/caseih-tractors-factory-sorted.html

(Update: a video that shows its various products. It also has links to other CaseIH videos. Some Case steam tractors. A Facebook posting of 30 pictures showing Case products through the years. A video introducing Case's Case-O-Matic tractors around 1958-60.)

Engineering World posted

The closest Case IH dealer to Downers Grove, IL, is 50 miles away (Stoller Intl, Inc., 3196 North Illinois Route 23, Ottawa, IL, 61350).

http://www.caseih.com/en_us/pages/dealerlocator.aspx?country=1%20-%20United%20States&zip=60515

(new window)    (source)   Made in 1974. That was probably their peak. They had 36 plants and over 100,000 employees. The scenes include Wisconsin Steel.   Forging a crankshaft: it is stamped flat, and then it goes into a machine that twists the cranks to the correct angle.   The operators of stamping presses must have their hands in brackets far away from the dies before the machine will cycle.

Ford and New Holland

In 1986 Ford bought Sperry New Holland and formed Ford New Holland. It is interesting that Ford's blue color for the tractors survived, but the brand name did not.
 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/NewHollandAgricultureLogo.png

Wikipedia has the following locations for there 22 factories.

Asia

• Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan: tractors, engines (joint ventures)
• Harbin, China: tractors
• Naberezhnye Chelny, Russia: tractors and combines (joint venture)
• New Delhi, India: tractors
• Shanghai, China: tractors (joint venture)
• Tashkent, Uzbekistan: tractors (joint venture)

Europe

• Ankara, Turkey: tractors, engines (joint ventures)
• Antwerp, Belgium: components
• Basildon, UK: tractors
• Coex, France: grape harvesters
• Croix, France: components
• Jesi, Italy: tractors
• Lecce. Italy: telehandlers
• Modena, Italy: components
• Płock, Poland: combines and balers
• Zedelgem, Belgium: combines, balers and forage harvesters
• Cork,Ireland: tractors

North America

Mexico

• Querétaro: tractors and components (joint venture)

United States

• Fargo, North Dakota: tractors
• Grand Island, Nebraska: combines and hay and forage equipment
• New Holland, Pennsylvania: balers, hay and forage equipment
• Racine, Wisconsin: tractor assembly, transmissions

Canada

• Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: planting and seeding equipment

South America

Brazil

• Rio Verde: sprayers, tractors and combines
• Curitiba: tractors and combines
• Piracicaba: sprayer
• Sorocaba: combines

The New Holland, Pennsylvania, location is where Abe Zimmerman founded the New Holland Manufacturing company in 1895, and it is the North American headquarters of the company and "the largest hay tools production facility in the world" (Wikipedia). The company headquarters is in Turin, Italy because in 1991 Fiat purchased 80% of Ford New Holland.

To choose dealer locations, I had to choose which equipment I wanted. I first picked tractors, but that gave me locations that were too close to the metro area so I was probably finding "park district" dealers rather than farmer dealers. So I did a search for "big balers" because that is something I have never seen before and I want to see one.

The closest dealer to Downers Grove, IL, is 39 miles away.

http://agriculture.newholland.com/us/en/dealers/Pages/DealersLocatorPage.aspx

In 1999 Case IH merged with New Holland Ag to form a new parent company, CNH Global.  But the Case IH and New Holland brands are still distinct. CNH Global also includes the Austrian manufacturer Steyr and joint ventures in China, Japan, and Russia. In 2013, CNH Global and Fiat Industrial were merged into CNH Industrial.

Allis-Chalmers

(Update: biography of Edward Allis.)

In the late 1800s, Allis-Chalmers had a thriving heavy-machinary plant in West Allis, Wisconsin.

https://allischalmershistory.omeka.net/history

A-C started making tractors in 1914. In 1985 A-C sold the agricultural division to Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz (HD) to form Deutz-Allis. The last tractor was built in the West Allis plant on December 6, 1985. Management bought the Deutz-Allis assets in 1990 and formed AGCO (Allis Gleaner Co.). On January 30, 1999, a company that once employed 41,000 people laid off the last 100 employees.

For A-C, the factory list in Wikipedia is a list of former sites.

• Corporate offices, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Tractor plant, West Allis, Wisconsin
• Gleaner combine plant, Independence, Missouri (site inherited from Gleaner Manufacturing Company)
• Tractor plant, La Porte, Indiana (site inherited from Advance-Rumely)
• Implement plant, La Crosse, Wisconsin (site inherited from La Crosse Plow Works)
• Tractor plant, Gadsden, Alabama
• Heavy equipment plant in Springfield, Illinois (site inherited from Monarch Tractor Company)
• Various parts factories in Chicago
• Others

And someone has already dug into the A-C factory history.

Jason Jordan shared Brett Daltman's photo in Allis Chalmers Tractors

Update: I'm not the only one that takes pictures of tractor dealers. It seems the photo is from a dealer's web site.

I came across a video of the building of an earthen dam that uses a custom dual-dozer with a 20-foot blade.

A history of A-C including a round baler introduced in 1940 as their "Roto-Baler." (I thought round baling was invented by a agriculture professor in Iowa in the 1980s as a favor to a farmer friend who wanted a solution to reducing the labor needed to harvest hay.)

This posting about moving production from the Independence Missouri Gleaner plant to Hesston KS in 2000 has other information such as who manufactured the engines. Justin Hiner I went through the plant in 2005. Challenger, Massey Ferguson, Gleaner combines all running down one assembly line

AGCO combines

Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline

White Motor Corporation acquired Oliver in 1960 and Minneapolis-Moline in 1963. By 1969, the same models were being sold as both Oliver and M-M with  just a change in the paint color, decals, and grille. In 1974, these two brands were discontinued and the White brand was used. The original Oliver Chilled Plow Works factory in South Bend was closed in 1985.

Kenny Toohill posted

Heads up folks. FB is alive today about a blacksmiths birthday.

Here are some points that might help you get through the day.

John Deere was a blacksmith and made a steel plow. He died before the term tractor came into use.

James OLIVER invented the chilled plow which remains essentially the same yet today.

HART PARR is credited with the term TRACTOR, #190 built 1903 which is the
earliest known internal-combustion-engined agricultural tractor in the United States (Wikipedia)

OLIVER HART & PARR built factories / John Deere had a blacksmith shop -
Greg Davis Thanks for sharing. Most Oliver people know these facts. Most others think John Deere invented the tractor. I may have to copy and paste the facts you just listed with your permission.Kenny Toohill Greg Davis - the more that copy and paste this the better. Go for it!Central States Hart-Parr Oliver Collectors Association John Deere bought Froelich but didn't do anything with it. They bought Waterloo Boy to get into the tractor business in 1918. One of the board members on John Deere's board developed the Dain all wheel drive 3 wheel tractor about the same time but few were sold, too expensive.Kenny Toohill 1837 vs 1857One is just a hunk of bent iron - the other is a proper plowMarty Kamysz My great grandfather steamed and formed the handles for these, he eventually worked his way up to a blacksmith job, and eventually the precursor to tool and die.Gregory Conner Was Hart Parr a part of Oliver when they invented the tractor? Or did Oliver buy Hart Parr?Kenny Toohill Gregory Conner four companies merged in 1929 to form The Oliver Farm Equipment Company.American Seeding Machine CompanyOliver Chilled Plow WorksHart-Parr Tractor CompanyNichols and Shepard

 c.1880.

An artist conception drawing of an aerial view, c.1900

Richard M. Gaskill posted
Minneapolis Moline Tractor Factory, Minneapolis Minnesota, 1939

The Hopkins, MN, headquarters site of M-M has been redeveloped as a Honda automobile dealership.

White Farm Equipment was purchased by AGCO in 1991.

(Update: a video about what killed Oliver. The short answer: White.)

Many of the 31 photos in this post are of M-M tractors.

More M-M photos

Massey Ferguson

AGCO purchased Massey Ferguson in 1994 and has continued to support that brand with more models and factories. And AGCO purchased Caterpillar Agriculture Equipment Business and supports that business as their Challenger brand. The best info I have on AGCO's factories is this map I copied from an AGCO video on manufacturing.

http://video.realviewtv.com/corporate/agco2012/?channel=0&chapter=8

The closest dealer to Downers Grove is 71 miles away (Mc Cullough Implement Co , 1966 North State Route 1, Watseka, IL   60970). (Update: 70 years of production in Coventry, England.)

(Update: South Bend History: 1 & 2)

John Deere

John Deere is still John Deere. But they got into the tractor business by buying Waterloo Boy. Their own Dain design was considered a failure.

The closest dealer to Downers Grove for agricultural equipment is 29 miles away. But the second one  is of more interest because it is in a town along the Illinois Waterway and the I&M Canal, 11900 N STATE ROUTE 47, MORRIS IL 60450.

http://dealerlocator.deere.com/servlet/country=US

More "Dealer Tests"

The "closest dealers" test of the viability of a tractor brand seems to be flawed. If I use Wesley Chapel, FL, (zip: 33543) instead of Downers Grove (60515), I get very different results. Even searching for tractors instead of big balers, New Holland's closest was 62 miles and Case IH was 71 miles with only 2 dealers in Florida whereas AGCO had 5 dealers within 27 miles! John Deere's closest was 21 miles and there were 5 dealers within 60 miles.

So I did another test using Fort Wayne, IN, because it is my hometown and I could still remember my zip code, 46805. And because it is in the middle of farming country. John Deere wins, but Massey Ferguson (AGCO) beats Case IH and New Holland.

John Deere

Case IH

New Holland

AGCO, specifically Massey Ferguson:

19 Miles		Harmony Outdoor Equipment 102 Peckhart Ct. Auburn , IN   46706 (260) 925-1918
20 Miles		Homier & Sons Incorporated 119 North Hyman Po Box 429 Payne , OH   45880 (419) 263-2912
25 Miles		Truelove Bros. Inc. 2255 N. State Road 9 P.O. Box 1 Albion , IN   46701 (260) 636-2151
31 Miles		Heritage Farm Equipment Store Inc. 1234 W. Main Street Van Wert , OH   45891 (419) 238-7278
32 Miles		Affolder Impl Sales Inc. 6704 S. Us Hwy 27 Berne , IN   46711 (260) 589-2964

Long-Distance Phone Microwave Towers

When I started heading south on US-45 after getting off of I-57, I spotted a microwave tower that still had long-distance telephone antennas. Since the road had a full width shoulder and I was doing just 10 mph, it was easy to pull off the road to get a picture. (Facebooked)

(Notes on concrete microwave towers)

20140723-24 0005c

If you did a long-distance phone call in the 1960s or 70s, it probably went through several of these towers. Fiber optic cables have made these towers obsolete, so these will now start disappearing.

At The Controls posted
One of the first microwave relay systems in the US, a 5 GHz link built by AT&T's manufacturing arm Western Electric in 1946 using military technology that provided telephone service 22 miles between Los Angeles and Catalina island off the coast of California. This is the Los Angeles end, two parabolic dishes one for transmitting and one for receiving. From "Bell Laboratories' Role in Victory" in Bell Telephone magazine, summer 1946, p. 123

James Shackleford: Probably using a reflex klystron directly, not much power needed at 5 GHz with a 40 dB gain parabolic.

Daniel E. Twedt: RF Exposure Anecdote: A former roommate of mine spent a little too much time in the Air Force servicing various radar components and found out later he had lost his ability to father any children.

Steven Fern: Daniel E. Twedt When in the service a friend was cautioned that standing where he was, very close to a transmit antenna, could prevent his fathering children. “That’s right”, he replied.

safe_image for Vintage Skynet: AT&T's Abandoned "Long Lines" Microwave Tower Network

The towers are spaced so that there is a clear line of sight from an antennae on this tower to an antennae on the next tower. Because of the curvature of the earth, a tower needs to be built about every 25 miles (34-jumps-to-chicago). The antennae is specifically a horn. Originally, it looked like:

But, since metal reflects microwaves, they were able to turn the horn vertically by adding the 45-degree sheet of metal at the end. This made it easier to mount the horn on the tower. I got a closeup of the top of the tower because I could see just one waveguide, not four. The closeup confirms that just the horn farthest from us on the left still has a waveguide attached to it.

So I was wondering if they have started to dismantle this tower. At first I thought a Bing image shows several waveguides are still going from the tower to the building. But now I think the white line between the tower and the building might be a "cable rack" for waveguides. The street-side view was looking at the north side of the tower. This view is looking at the south side. You can see the waveguide coming from the southeast horn.

Bing map

The building contains the electronics needed to amplify the microwaves for the next hop across the country. When microwave communication was first developed, waveguides had not been invented. So the towers were made of concrete so that the electronics could be built on top of the tower next to the horns. I don't know if they are still standing, but in the 1970s I saw two of these towers for the original New York to Chicago link still standing in northern Indiana. Unfortunately, I no longer remember where they were.  I'll have to keep an eye out for them during my next trip across Indiana.


The electronics in the building must have also extracted phone circuits that were terminating in nearby towns. But I don't see any phone cables coming from the building to hook into the local network.  So this tower is no longer doing its function of relaying long-distance calls across the country. It is now just handling long distance calls that terminate in this area because it is not economical to lay a fiber optic cable to this area for a relatively small number of circuits.

I wonder if the waveguides contain precious metal or if they can be used in other applications. What else would justify the labor costs of removing three of the waveguides?

Another strange maintenance issue I noticed while studying a closeup is that the rungs of the ladder have been removed from the top 2/3 of the tower. In the closeup below left you can see the rungs at the bottom, but not at the top. I added a red line in the picture to the right to indicate where the rungs stop.

I've seen rungs missing from the bottom before so that unauthorized people can't easily climb a tower. The maintenance people probably carry a ladder on their truck to climb the lower part. I can't imagine why you would remove rungs from the upper part but leave the lower part intact. The rungs stop too low to use this as a cell-phone tower.

An aerial view of the tower indicates that the direction of the link was a little north of east to a little south of west.

Bing map

The next day, while driving along US 19 in Florida, I spotted another tower. Since I was traveling at highway speeds and the shoulder was about 2 feet, I didn't pull over for a street side picture. But later I was able to find it in an aerial view.

Google map

Note that this tower slightly changes the direction of the next hop. Given what I learned about the Illinois tower by studying the picture---the removal of three waveguides and most of the ladder rungs---I now wish I had turned around and got a picture of the Florida tower.

In Winter Garden, Florida, I noticed that there was a microwave tower without any microwave antennas. There are a few cell-phone antennas.

20140801 0202

The building under the tower is for the phone company. The red-roofed building in front of that building is the old Atlantic Coast Line depot and now a local museum. The parkway this side of the cars is were the ACL tracks came through town. A lady in the museum mentioned she was glad to see the big antennas come down because buzzards used to perch on them.

So fiber optic cables must have been laid to Winter Garden. Since long distance fiber optic cables tend to use the right-of-way of railroads, and there are no longer any railroads serving this town, I wonder where the fiber optic cables were buried. (The only track left in town is a remnant of the Tavares & Gulf Railroad between Winter Garden and Ocoee.) Perhaps the cable is buried in the parkway that was the ACL right-of-way. I wonder if the phone company bought the ACL right-of-way and lets the town use the land. Or if the phone company leases access to the parkway from the town. Or....?

Jeremy Buck Jordan posted two photos with the comment: "These old weather stations are scattered all over the state. Not real sure if the tower still serves a purpose, but the building sure isn't getting any attention."

Bob Klaus: Not weather stations, but part of the obsolete AT&T microwave LongLines military telephone network built during the Cold War. The giveaway are the cornucopia-shaped horn reflector antenna on top. AT&T sold off the towers in the 1990s. Most are now owned by Heartland Towers. The horn antennas remain unused, but the towers now support modern microwave dishes and cell phone repeaters.

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/vintage-skynet-atts-abandoned-long-lines-microwave-tower-network

https://personal.garrettfuller.org/blog/2018/01/19/att-long-lines-a-forgotten-system/

The tower photos barely indicate how huge the horn reflector antennas are. Compare with the size of the instrument house doorway and stairs in this photo.

In 1965, AT&T engineers Penzias and Wilson were tasked with troubleshooting the source of noise in the antenna. They verified the antenna was not the source. They mounted a horn on a ground swivel and proved the noise originated from our galactic center, and got a Nobel Prize in 1978 for verifying the big bang theory. https://supernova.eso.org/.../penzias-wilson-hornantenna... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp65co.html

Today, the transistor microwave transceivers are integrated into the focus of the small parabolic dishes, and are powered and fed with CAT6 Ethernet cable. When the LandLines system was designed, vacuum tubes were in use. The 6 GHz microwave carriers scooped up by the horn antennas were fed into inch square silver-plated brass wave guides that ran down to a two storey building buried two stories underground to resist a nuke blast. The waveguides were pressurized with dry nitrogen to keep the silver plating bright. The upper story contained racks of vacuum tube electronics - the diplexers, transmitters, receivers, channelizers and modems for a 7 watt 6 GHz signal. The lower storey contained generators, fuel tanks, air handlers, and life support for a 2 man crew to be sealed off underground for 2 weeks during a nuclear attack, if necessary. Everything was mounted on shock-absorbing springs, even the toilet!

The towers were designed to survive a nearby nuke strike, and are sited at optimal hilltops before the later microwave networks, so the old towers are still prized locations!

Travis Baber: Here is a neat documentary about at&t long lines. Did you know these towers also relayed television before satellites? Yup.

https://youtu.be/XWwV4Hc-Nkc?si=_shNDbmZxpd0pdIk

1

2

20150510 1135

I came across the largest collection of microwave antennas I have ever seen south of Chicago. I'm not surprised that a major urban area had a large complex. I am surprised that all of the antennas still seem to be active. There are a lot of railroads near by so I would have thought that fiber optic cables would have made these obsolete quite a while ago.

20141017-20 0084c

I was going along the tracks in McComb, IL looking for grain elevators and interesting old buildings and found their central office. Since there is a university in town and an active BNSF railroad route to town, I assume the town gets service via fiber optics and this tower is providing service for smaller towns in the area. A detail showing the wave guides going into the central office. (Facebooked)

20160811 4088

While driving up Peace Road to the Sycamore Steam Show, I noticed this tower. I turned west on Fairview Drive and took the picture from Macom Drive even though I was in a bit of a hurry to get to the show before the 1:30 Parade of Power. I did make it with some time to spare. (Facebooked)

Satellite

Tommy Lee Fitzwater posted
Dennis Boyd Microwave tower in the background?
Thomas Cain Dennis Boyd this is Barr Street, looking north from Washington. What was News Sentinel building on left (now Unired Way), before 1st Wayne Church built, and after 1910s Market Buildings demolished. Tower in back is GTE, prior to their 1970s renovation. The white box building at rear left is Wolf and Dessauer, where the were moving to about the time of the fire. That's now Citizens Square.
Jack C. Shutt Dennis Boyd Yes. That is the old GTE microwave tower, before the "lighthouse tower" was built on top of the building.
[Fort Wayne had General Telephone Electric instead of AT&T for the phone service.
The stone building in the middle is the Old City Hall.]
John Hume The newest vehicle I see in the photo is a '59 Chevy on the far right. Can't tell what year the Ford Falcon is parked two spaces in front of the Chevy.
Marc Servos I admit I didn't notice the Falcon at first, thanks. Obviously from the 1960-63 model year range, which I assume '60 models being on market in late 1959. But we don't see the front to help pinpoint the model year.

A 1960 map of the broadcast lines connecting the stations. (Source: Long-Lines.net) via personal.garrettfuller

(new window)   And then the YouTube AI offered: TV transmission (radio transmission is at 6:13), long distance (microwave towers at 8:13) and #1 ESS (for my information).

Schultz Turf and Forage Seed Co.

I was stopped in Dieterich, IL, waiting for traffic to clear so that I could turn left on SR 33, and I noticed to my right the tops of two elevator lags. It struck me as strange that a rather small town would have two grain elevators. And then I noticed an old building near the lags, so I turned right instead of left on SR 33 when there was a gap in the traffic and found a parking lot.

The old building had significant additions built along side the tracks.

20140723-24 0008c

Over the shipping-and-receiving door in the lower-left corner is the sign Schultz Turf & Forage Seed. (When I looked at a satellite photo, a semi truck was parked at that door.) I had assumed it was a corn seed company because as I drove down the road, I saw signs on fences indicating which hybrid was growing in the field.

The lag over the industrial building is connected with a lag for more traditional concrete silos across the tracks that serves some silos. And there is a third lag for three more silos closer to the camera. (You can't see the top of the closer lag, just the pipes going to the silos.)

But when I found the company on the web, I learned that it sells about every kind of seed except corn including wildflower mixes.

Another clue that this wasn't a standard grain elevator is that the building had some dust collectors on the roof. To get a shot of the roof, I had to take the picture from the street side instead of the track side, but there was a new addition and a substation in the way that make the photo confusing. So I added a red rectangle to highlight the dust collectors. I used the thickest line that Paint offers, but it is still rather hard to spot. Look on the roof to the right of the old part of the building.

 
I assume the dust collectors are part of the equipment that cleans the seed before it is packaged.