Grain, hogs are Henry County

In the early days, farmers walked their own fields and picked the best corn as seed corn for the following year. Henry County farmers Merle Morgan of Galva, G.E. Hulting, Clyde Ford, Ira Sieben and William Wyffels, all of the Geneseo area, began to experiment with hybrids and later marketed corn.

Ford, Sieben and Wyffels are in business under those names today. After several buyouts, G.E. Hulting has become part of Remington Hybrids which contracts for production, cleaning and packaging of corn and soybeans for other companies.

Farmers used their own private grain storage elevators before 1900, but about the turn of the century farmers pooled resources to begin the first co-operatives rather than sell their surpluses to a monopoly.

Henry Service has 1,790 members and is affiliated with Gromark and Cenex Harvest States. Geneseo Co-Op and Gateway Co-Op of Galva and Kewanee are affiliated with Farmland. Other co-operatives provide ag lending, locker service and electric service.

In 1946 the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared Henry County the greatest hog-producing county in the world. The title of "hog capital" went to Kewanee after State Sen. Frank P. Johnson delivered a speech on the subject in Springfield.

With today's frustration over low hog prices, it's well to remember Sen. Johnson's words on the honor of "hog capital" going to Henry County from 52 years ago: "Ships made Carthage, the wars made Rome. Beer built Milwaukee, gold built Nome. Cotton built Atlanta, the harbor made New York. But good old Chicago was built on pork!"