Agro-Culture Launches IQHub Museum

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Grandly arising from the surrounding Mid-Michigan farmscape, Agro-Culture Liquid Fertilizer’s state-of-the-art corporate headquarters, with its futuristic, glass-dominate design, tends to look a tad out of place among the neighboring barns and quaint farm houses that endlessly dot the region.

However, there’s good reason for the (what some would call) opulent structure — and that’s not just so the company’s executives have a plush office space to call home and entertain business clients in.

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No, the headquarters’ recent 9,500-square-foot addition, dubbed the “IQhub” and described in company literature as “a center for agricultural history, innovation and exploration,” gives the building a more substantial purpose from an outsiders prospective: educating the masses on the role large-scale agriculture plays in our food system.

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Agro-Culture outreach and education manager Burt Henry, who reportedly had a large part in making the IQhub, a vision of company CEO Troy Bancroft, a stunning reality, says the addition is a perfect fit for the St. Johns, MI-based companies’ organizational ethos.

“There’s just a family culture that permeates this organization, and I’m amazed every day at the teamwork and character that our employees exhibit,” he says. “The IQhub fits in so well with the vision that the Bancroft family has, so well in fact that it’s hard to imagine it not being here.”

Now officially open and not going anywhere anytime soon, IQhub was a two-year undertaking, and Agro-Culture seems to have spared nary an expense in putting the facility together. Flat screen displays are omnipresent throughout the exhibits and lend a tech-type feel to the interactive displays, and the exhibits themselves are hands-on and innovative in tracing back many of agriculture’s biggest developments — from Squanto teaching the first Pilgrims how to fertilize maize to the Hopkins Patent, which revolutionized the production of potash.

“The whole vision was to give back — give back to the community, give back to the industry, give back to society, for that matter,” says Henry. “We know the population is moving away from agriculture as a whole, and people still need to know where their food comes from. And right now, people young and old just don’t seem to understand where their food comes from, how it gets onto the plate. There’s a lot of knowledge to be gained in the IQhub.”

Still, as anyone who’s ever toured or spent time around an agriculture-themed facility can tell you, the idea that if-you-build-it-they-will-come sometimes doesn’t translate within this genre.

“We’ve really tried to drive interest by: A.) Obviously getting the word out; B.) It’s free admission, and C.) We’ve gone out and garnered support from Michigan agriculture to pay for the school groups’ transportation,” says Henry.

The Michigan Farm Bureau, Mich­i­­gan Corn Growers Association (MCGA), Greenstone Farm Credit and Spartan Insurance Co., are the first outside partners to offer support in the form of donating funds for Agro-Cultures’ transportation grant program, and at the IQhub grand opening, MCGA announced a challenge to local private industry to match the association’s $15,000 initial donation to the fund.

CEO Troy Bancroft hopes the facility will help convey to future consumers Agro-Culture’s plant production philosophy.

“One of the things that we advocate — through our Responsible Nutrient Management Group — we want to prescription apply nutrients in the seed zone that will have an effect on that plant during that growing season. We don’t want to broadcast, and we don’t want over applying,” Bancroft says. “Some of the very folks that will tour this building — they’re our neighbors and we have to be able to speak, and to speak well — about things such as using ounces of pesticides versus gallons, like in the old days, and buffer strips for pollinators and other foragers. We’ve got to encourage ag to talk about what we’re doing, or other folks will for us.”

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