Roy Applequist

Company

Great Plains Manufacturing, Incorporated

Job Title

Owner/President

Location

Salina, KS

Are you a Master or a Maverick?

It all depends. Being an independent, family owned business in a world of ever-increasing powerful, international corporations lends itself to being a pretty independent Maverick. On the other hand, for the last 36 years we have been attempting to develop a company which delivers a complete package of quality products and services to our customers in a consistent manner. Looking at it this way you could say we try to be Masters.

Today you need to be both.

What is your main concern about the ag industry – currently and in the future? What keeps you up at night?

Currently the volatility of agricultural commodity prices is what most concerns us. The highs are higher than we’ve experienced in the past and we anticipate that due to the historical cyclical nature of the ag industry we think we'll likely experience some difficult lows in the future. However, the population of the world continues to increase and every year there is a growing demand for agricultural products worldwide. So, at the end of the day I think the future looks truly bright.

We continually work to grow our business in a responsible, diversified way that will allow us to move forward in spite of the cyclical nature of the agriculture business.

What advancement in technology do you foresee in the next 10-20 years?

There will be many technological advancements during the next couple of decades. In our part of the industry we foresee continued improvement in equipment capability to refine the agronomics of growing grain. Every day there are advancements in high-tech control systems utilized on agricultural implements. I expect to see significant refinements of dependability and ease of use with these advancing control systems. As an example, there are continuing advancements in the way planters perform. One of our most important goals as is to continue to build advanced systems that are progressively easier to use and more dependable.