Farmers have a story to tell, and Agricen wanted to capture it. Agricen is a plant health technology company delivering innovative biochemical-based products that sustainably enhance plant health, quality and yield potential. During the 2020 growing season, Agricen sent out a film crew to follow farmers in four different locations across the United States.
Glimpses of The Growers
The result is Last Stand. Last Stand was filmed during the 2020 growing season in Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Virginia, and Illinois.
In the film, you’ll get a glimpse into the lives of some of the top growers in the United States as they strive to produce the highest yields they can, despite the obstacles Mother Nature keeps throwing their way.
“While you can never predict what the growing season will be like, the 2020 season certainly did manage to throw many surprises into the mix. Excessive rain and hurricanes, the historic derecho in Iowa and across the upper Midwest – and that’s just the weather,” says Michael Totora, president and CEO of Agricen. “We think this is an important film that not only gives viewers a unique glimpse into the lives of the featured farmers, but also into the lives of farmers across the U.S. in 2020.”
The farmers featured in the film have a passion for farming and produced some of the highest corn yields in the nation in recent years. They also have the humor, grit and resilience to help them succeed at the job.
About the Growers
Last Stand features grower Don Stall of Charlotte, Michigan, grower Kelly Garrett of Arion, Iowa, grower Heath Cutrell of Chesapeake, Virginia, and growers Kevin and Shawn Kalb of Dubois, Indiana. These farmers have had some of the highest corn yields in the nation in recent years and have used some of Agricen’s product technologies to achieve these yields.
Don Stall of Charlotte, Michigan is a champion corn grower and former Marine. The lessons he learned in the Marine Corps are still with him today, helping him face the challenges of being a farmer.
Kelly Garrett farms with his father and three sons in Iowa, where they work cattle and grow corn, soybeans and winter wheat.
Heath Cutrell is a third-generation corn, soybean and wheat grower farming in Virginia and across the state line in North Carolina.
Kevin and Shawn Kalb farm with their children in Southern Indiana, where they produce corn, soybeans and turkeys, and can often be found smashing state and national corn yield records.
Last Stand also features Dr. Fred Below and Connor Sible from the Crop Physiology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, crop consultants from Nutrien Ag Solutions and others involved in crop production. Only five years ago, Dr. Below and his team at the University of Illinois’ Crop Physiology Laboratory would rarely see 300 bushel corn plots in their research. Today, it’s almost routine.
Another factor that ties the growers together is that they have used Agricen’s product technologies in their high-yielding programs.
“Several years ago, we noticed that a number of growers with top corn yields at the state and national levels used our product technologies in their production programs,” says Totora. “With Last Stand, we set out to dig into that, but it quickly became much more. Their stories, as captured in the film, are deeply personal, yet also familiar to farmers everywhere.”
Last Stand, filmed by agriculture documentary veterans Light Work Productions, is the second long-form film about farming developed by Agricen. Agricen’s previous film about agriculture, Prove It to Me, which followed five farmers from Arkansas and Iowa during the 2015 growing season, can be viewed at Agricen.TV.
A shorter, 20-minute version of the film is also available to view or visit Laststand.ag to watch the full-length movie.
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