CHS DynAgra helps fire halls

Times Reporter  

 

CHS DynAgra is a leading North American farm-owned cooperative and global agricultural business. Farmers, ranchers and cooperatives own the company, which is committed to helping their customers through domestic and global operations.

On Sept. 11 the Standard and Carseland locations, in conjunction with their Ag safety programs, donated to each of the towns’ fire halls to help cover expenses of running their business and to keep the equipment updated. A $5,000 grant was given to the Carseland hall, and the Standard hall received $8,000.

Mark Biedenfeld, Canadian Region Director for CHS DynAgra could not be happier to see the company give back to community members.

“So CHS has been in Western Canada for exactly two years now. We entered the western Canadian retail market place via the acquisition at DynAgra and since then we have made some additional acquisitions,” said Biedenfeld.

The objective for CHS was to meet the demands of the farmers and try to meet their needs.

“We look to grow and expand our business as we determined farmer needs and subsequent business opportunities,” said Biedenfeld.

“When you think of CHS and the legacy companies that make up CHS it’s an 80-year-old company. So today it’s a large organization that utilizes the Fortune Magazine rankings in the top 75.”

“These grants and gifts are derived basically from the desire either from local organizations and indoor operations such as what we have here to indicate or identify a need in the market place that we do business in that our foundation organization can assist to make things better,” said Biedenfeld.

Carseland fire chief Mark Heilman says the fire hall is going to use the $5,000 towards more safety wear for the firemen.

“Basically it’s going to be used for personal protective equipment. We are going to order fire retardant coveralls, balaclavas, gloves and gas masks,” said Heilman.

Standard fire chief Phil Faubion was very honored to have received the award for the one-year-old fire hall, and the money will go towards a new fire engine that is coming in.

“It’s going to help us a lot, we just got a new fire truck coming in at the end of this month and this money would go towards outfitting it with specialty tools and be able to support the community with it,” said Faubion.

 “One of our members used to work for CHS and he started the process, he left the company. My Deputy Malcolm McKinnon took the bull by the horns and continued on the process, it took close to a year for it to happen.”

The Standard fire hall has 24 unpaid volunteer firefighters and Faubion is in his 41st year of being Standard Fire Chief.