Kenn-Feld and TTG Merge as TRULAND Equipment, Creating Regional Dealer Group

Jul 06, 2023

Kenn-Feld Group and TTG Equipment will merge as TRULAND Equipment, the CEOs of the two companies announced Wednesday. The equal merger of the two John Deere Dealer groups is scheduled to occur on Aug. 21, 2023.

This move brings together eighteen John Deere locations across Indiana and Ohio. TRULAND Equipment will also offer new opportunities to their employees with increased scale.

“This partnership was a several-year process, and we took our time to make sure this was a good fit for our two companies as well as for our customers,” says CEO of Kenn-Feld Group, Tom Burenga. “By combining our experience and capabilities, we are building a stronger organization that is better positioned to thrive while offering an expanded product portfolio to our customers.”

TRULAND Equipment will continue to serve its customers in all eighteen of its locations in the region.

CEO of TTG Equipment, Jameson Ringger, emphasized that TRULAND will stay focused on maintaining a local feel and a relationship-based business model. “We are two local companies joining together into one local company. While the name on the sign will change, the team will not. We are dedicated to cultivating lasting relationships with our customers, providing new opportunities for;our employees, and investing in our community. This move is a win for all three.”

Source : Farm Equipment

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators