DEKALB marks 50th year at ‘Seed Corn Capital’

CONSTANTINE, Mich. — This St. Joseph County village with a population of 2,076 is touted as the “Seed Corn Capital of the World” and the site of Bayer’s largest seed corn production facility.

This marks the 50th year the DEKALB brand has been growing seed corn in the Constantine area.

The company further invested in the area in 1997 with a construction of a seed production facility and expansion has been ongoing ever since.

The facility now sits on 80 acres and has about 77 full-time employees and 15 contract employees.

Seed corn for the facility is received from four growing areas in Michigan and northern Indiana, totaling 24,500 acres in 2024. Thirty-seven full-time and numerous contract employees and laborers complete fieldwork.

About 2.5 million units — seed bags and bulk boxes — are produced annually at Constantine, representing 72% of Bayer’s national DEKALB corn brand. It is one of eight Bayer corn production sites in the United States.

“Due to the fact that we’re the largest corn production facility, we do a lot of transferring of product once we get it packaged to distribution centers and to our other Midwest corn facilities,” said Barry Meyer, plant manager.

“We have a wide range of maturities here, and obviously not all of that is going to get grown in Michigan. So, we do distribute to the other locations and then they’ll ship that out to their dealers.

“Once the seed is ready to ship, we distribute it to dealers in Michigan and then we will ship transfers to our other eight corn production sites in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Nebraska.

“We have distribution centers in those states, as well. They will then distribute to their corresponding dealers they have assigned to them.”

Growing Advantage

The area is a popular location for seed corn production because of its sandy loam soils and irrigation capabilities.

“Those soils work really well for seed production. They are able to get back into the fields a little bit quicker doing planting splits. It’s raining today and we’ve been able to keep picking out in the fields. You’re not able to do that in some of the environments. So, the sandy loam soils are very beneficial,” Meyer said.

“It makes our site very reliable as far as the targeted bushels that they’re looking for on each of the hybrids that we’re raising.

“Obviously, the soil types and the growing environment aid in that aspect, but also with the skilled labor that’s here at this location, they make a lot of things happen for us here.”

Planting, spraying and detasseling are done by contractors. That reliability allows the facility to meet the farmers’ seed needs.

“In a typical year, we run about 105% to 110% of what we set for targets on each of our hybrids. Obviously, the irrigation plays a big factor in that,” Meyer said.

“That speaks to that reliability back to the company in regards to making sure we’re hitting those targets on each of those hybrids.”

Quality Assurance

Seed quality is the facility’s highest priority.

“Measures to ensure that quality are taken throughout the entire process. We have some automation tools in place to make sure we keep product integrity in place and don’t have any mixes and that kind of thing. We have quite a bit of automation throughout the process,” Meyer said.

“We have a lab onsite where they do sample preparation to send to Illinois to do our germination testing, and we do purity testings in the St. Louis lab.

“Here at the site’s lab we also do physical analysis on the seed, we do shakeouts on all of our seed batches to determine how we need to set up our screens in the tower and those type of things.”

The site also has foundation and production research departments. The Foundation Department supplies seed needed for the DEKALB production plants to plant the next year, and production research conducts various studies to aid in production decisions.

The corn is picked on the ear with husklage still intact to protect the seed. As part of quality control measures, corn is brought in with varying moistures to help protect the seed as it move through the process.

Samples are taken throughout the delivery trucks to ensure a relative moisture. Drop-down belts reduce damage as the seed moves from conveyor to bin.

Optek sensors provide real-time measurements of temperature and moisture. Dryer temperatures run between 95 and 105 degrees, based on inbound moisture.

Reversible dryers start with up air and move to down air at the midway mark. Samples are taken frequently to validate the true moisture in the bins. Data from every sample is input into the Optek system.

Logistics

The Constantine plant has numerous moving parts during harvest, with trucks delivering and dumping corn and trucks shipping out the remaining silage and cobs.

“We typically average about 130 trucks through our facility per day,” Meyer said. “While this is all going on, we’re also running our tower, treating and packaging.

“We’ve packaged about 400,000 units already (through Sept. 24). As a result of that, that fills up our warehouse, so we’ve got to get those trucks out. It’s pretty common that we have 180 to 200 trucks in and out of our facility a day during harvest.”

The facility’s delivery point includes eight dumps, four lines and 24 husking beds. The clean ears are moved on to the dryers.

Each load is weighed, inspected, sorted, dried, shelled, stored, cleaned, treated and packaged before the product is shipped to distribution centers.