Dr. Gilford J. Ikenberry, Jr., 92, of McPherson, KS, died October 22, 2022, at The Cedars, McPherson. Funeral arrangements are with Stockham Family Funeral Home, McPherson. (website: www.stockhamfamily.com)
Dianne Kay (Watkins) Surface-Deckard
Dianne Kay (Watkins) Surface-Deckard, 72, of Marquette, KS, died October 20, 2022. Funeral arrangements are with Stockham Family Funeral Home, McPherson. (website: www.stockhamfamily.com)
Hutchinson’s Orscheln Farm store now a Bomgaars store
Hutchinson’s Orscheln Farm and Home Store is now Bomgaars.
However, store visitors won’t immediately notice any difference.
The family-owned retail farm and ranch supply chain headquartered in Sioux City, Iowa, acquired the location at 1500 E. 11th Ave., north of the Uptown Mall, as part of a divestiture agreement approved by the Federal Trade Commission last week related to the sale of the Orscheln company to Tractor Supply Co.
It is one of 73 stores Bomgaars has acquired, including 21 in Kansas. Other locations in the area include Salina, Newton, McPherson, Pratt, Great Bend, Garden City, Dodge City, and Hays. 
Another 16 Orscheln stores in Kansas will convert to Tractor Supply locations.
The new owner has retained all of the former Orscheln employees, said Heather Korbe, marketing director with Bomgaars, with no immediate plans for change.
The plan is to transition the stores over the next 12 to 15 months,” Korbe said.
That includes rebranding the store and changing its layout to reflect how Bomgaars operates.
“We don’t have a date when Hutchinson is on that list,” she said. “It will be one of the earlier stores, but it won’t be until early next spring.”
With the sale just occurring, the company is still figuring out how things will work, Korbe said, including when and how to change signs on the building.
“But it is a Bomgaars store now,” she said.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on having what you need when you need it,” she said. “That’s something we were founded on and truly believe. We want to deliver products our customers need at the right price and to have them on hand when you need them. We’ve got a lot of great vendors and suppliers.”
The company has four merchandise “pillars” it focuses on, Korbe said, including Dewalt tools, lawn and garden and other seasonal outdoor products, animal food for pets and livestock, and footwear.
“We have more than those four, but those four we really strive to have a good assortment and equipment,” she said.During its transition over the next year, as Orscheln stocks need replenishing, Bomgaars will bring in its products to replace them.
“Our pricing is generally pretty similar,” she said. “You’d have to look item to item to compare, but it’s generally similar. We plan to deliver the best prices on the products we sell to our customers.”
Bomgaars, operated by the Bomgaars family, serves the Midwest, High Plains and the Rockies with stores in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Kansas, according to its website.
The 70-year-old company has had a presence in Kansas since 2020, Korbe said, and before last week’s action, its stores were in Lyons, Hillsboro, Russell, Beloit, Burlington, Norton and Seneca.
On Feb. 17, 2021, Tractor Supply and Orscheln entered an agreement for Tractor Supply to acquire the smaller company for approximately $320 million.
However, the FTC, concerned about competition in communities with both Orscheln and Tractor Supply stores, ordered Tractor Supply to divest those dual store locations in 10 states.
Bomgaars was one of two farm retailers selected to purchase stores during a lengthy bidding process. Buchheit Enterprises Inc. of Illinois acquired 12 locations.
In addition, Tractor Supply agreed to sell the Orscheln corporate headquarters and a distribution center in Moberly, Missouri, to Bomgaars for approximately $10 million within 15 months after the close of the transaction, according to an earlier Tractor Supply release.
The sale resulted in Bomgaars growing by nearly 70% overnight, going from 107 stores to 180, Korbe said.
That makes it the second largest farm store chain in the nation, behind Tractor Supply, which operates more than 2,000 farm stores in every state except Alaska. Orscheln used to be number two.
“We’ve always prided ourselves in being a company that liked to grow by opportunity,” Korbe said. “When the opportunity presented itself to go into new consumer markets, we looked at it.”
“This one came up when Tractor Supply announced the purchase of Orscheln, and then the FTC stepped in and told them they need to look for buyers in several markets.”
“A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff was happening, with a number of other companies talking about it and what it would look like and bidding on stores,” she said. “I can’t go into full details, but we were very happy to be part of the consolidation process and to have this opportunity to grow and expand and to move into new markets. We look forward to meeting our new customers in these markets as well.”
She expects the Hutchinson store, and others in Kansas, will host grand openings sometime in the future, but “the scale and timing of that are yet to be determined.”
The divestiture order also contains a 10-year “prior approval” provision related to the buyers. It prohibits them from selling acquired stores for three years except to an acquirer that receives the prior approval of the FTC. And then, for the next seven years, buyers are required to get prior Commission approval to sell their acquired store to a buyer with another farm store within 60 miles.
The Hutchinson location was built in 2013 for Orscheln Farm and Home. The property is owned by Christian Ablah and Hutchinson 17th LLC.
Other new Bomgaars locations in Kansas include Atchison, Basehor, Concordia, El Dorado, Gardner, Goddard, Iola, Lawrence, Louisburg, Manhattan, Parsons and Topeka.
The 16 Kansas locations where Orscheln stores will become Tractor Supply stores include Arkansas City, Coffeyville, Colby, Ellsworth, Eureka, Garnett, Goodland, Independence, Junction City, Marysville, Medicine Lodge, Ottawa, Phillipsburg, Sabetha, Smith Center and Wellington.
As reported in The Hutchinson News
Germ theory, antibiotics, and our 21st century challenge
As a lover of the history of science and medicine, one of my favorite topics to read and learn about is the discovery of germ theory. Up until the mid to late 1800’s, diseases had numerous other theories, and the theory of miasma – meaning “bad air” – dominated as an explanation for cholera, plague, and other infectious outbreaks.
Bacteria themselves were seen and discovered with the development of the first microscopes in the 1600’s. Dutch scientist Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek is credited as the father of microbiology, having created the early versions of our modern microscopes. Though he saw microbes with his inventions, the idea that these tiny organisms caused disease was yet to be discovered.
Germ theory, though it had beginnings smattered in earlier times, really did not take off until discoveries by 19th century thinkers including Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and Robert Koch. This was an exciting time to be a biologist, and in my opinion these careers are all worthy of blockbuster movies. By the early 1900’s an enormous shift had occurred, and the idea that microorganisms could cause disease was well accepted.
Initially the discovery of germ theory was most useful in prevention – sanitation of water and food went a long way toward decreasing outbreaks of previously common diseases. But another huge change occurred in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin. Penicillin was a chemical compound secreted by a type of mold which Alexander Fleming found killed bacteria. By the mid century many other antibiotics were discovered and ultimately used to treat bacterial infections.
Antibiotics are certainly one of the greatest advancements in the history of medicine and have saved countless lives worldwide. However, as our ability to treat them has advanced, bacteria have continued to evolve. By numerous processes some types of bacteria have changed in ways to evade once-effective antibiotics. At the same time, development of new types of antibiotics have slowed to a trickle in the 21st century. Life-threatening bacterial infections for which we have no or limited ability to treat are a real concern of experts in infectious disease.
The challenge of our era, I think, is mitigating the danger posed by antibiotic-resistant infections. The most important step we can all take is to reduce the use of antibacterial medication when it is not necessary. Challenges for our hospital teams include looking critically every day to see if and which antibiotics can safely be stopped in hospitalized patients. Preserving the efficacy of this precious resource will be the work of all of us.
Kelly Evans-Hullinger, M.D. is part of The Prairie Doc® team of physicians and currently practices internal medicine in Brookings, South Dakota. Follow The Prairie Doc® at www.prairiedoc.org and on Facebook featuring On Call with the Prairie Doc® a medical Q&A show providing health information based on science, built on trust, streaming live on Facebook most Thursdays at 7 p.m. central.
Wheat Scoop: Converse with your coop during National Cooperative Month
Contact: Marsha Boswell, [email protected]
For audio version, visit kswheat.com.
“Just put on your boots and do it again,” was an apt sentiment a farmer recently expressed to Brandi Miller, president/CEO of the Kansas Cooperative Council, for how producers are dealing with weather concerns, delayed supply chains and trying to find help. But she wants to remind growers that they have more resources than their own grit and gumption, thanks to their local agricultural cooperatives, which are also working to tackle these unprecedented concerns.
“Given the challenges agriculture has faced in the last two years, we’ve been in this place that nobody has experienced before,” Miller said. “We’ve obviously been through droughts before — that’s not new — but not compounded with some of the residual supply chain issues and labor challenges.”
Miller and her team are taking to the road this October to visit with cooperatives and their members across the state as part of National Cooperative Month, proclaimed this year by both Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. Drawing a member’s name from a hat, the Kansas Cooperative Council is treating one cooperative in each of its four districts to lunch. Doing so has allowed them to dig into how agricultural cooperatives are working to address both today’s issues and tomorrow’s.
“It’s been great because it gives us a chance to sit down not just with the people that we usually interact with — which is usually the CEO or the manager — but also a lot of employees,” she said, noting that with this year’s drought and start-stop fall harvest there has been more time for those discussions. “We’ve had some great conversations with folks talking about their challenges, what we need to be watching going into the next legislative session and what opportunities there are to support our members better.”
According to the Kansas Cooperative Council, Kansas is home to more than 575 cooperative locations serving more than 116,000 members and employing more than 5,000 people. The local co-op is where farmers deliver and store their grain, market their crops, obtain field recommendations and purchase inputs. Agricultural cooperatives also return earnings to their members, known as patronage.
Outside of this now-standard set of services, cooperatives provide credit, insurance, electric service, health care, housing, telephone services and even childcare. Cooperatives also support the health of local economies by creating jobs, paying property taxes and income taxes and giving to charity.
Each October since the 1930s, the American agriculture industry has expressed appreciation for these member-owned, member-controlled businesses during National Co-Op Month. In addition to touring the state, Kansas Cooperative Council is also having a Co-op Month photo contest this month; entries are due by October 25. To enter or learn more about the work of cooperatives in Kansas, visit the organization’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/KansasCooperativeCouncil.
“I always try to encourage folks to learn about what their cooperatives are doing in their communities,” Miller said. “A common theme that cooperatives have is that they care about the communities they serve. It’s what I love working in this environment because these are businesses that support communities all year long, not just for the month of October.”
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Written by Julia Debes for Kansas Wheat
Gov. Laura Kelly signed the proclamation declaring October to be Co-p Month in Kansas. (Photo courtesy of Kansas Cooperative Council’s Facebook)
