About CHS
CHS is a global agribusiness owned by farmers, ranchers and cooperatives across the United States. Diversified in energy, agronomy, grains and foods, we’re committed to creating connections to empower agriculture, helping our owners and customers grow their businesses.
Our businesses
CHS offers a breadth of products and services to support our owners and customers every step of the way. Our practical solutions, local expertise and global connections give our farmer-owners and local cooperatives competitive advantages to reach their goals.
AGRONOMY
GLOBAL GRAIN & PROCESSING
Stewardship
CHS is committed to making a meaningful impact in agriculture and rural America. Through our stewardship initiatives, we invest in programs that develop new generations of ag leaders, promote ag safety and strengthen hometown communities.
ABOUT STEWARDSHIP
Cooperative value
Cooperatives are owned and governed by members who use its products, supplies, or services and operate in many sectors of the economy. In a cooperative system, people come together to scale buying power, gain access to goods and services and create economic opportunity.
Careers
At CHS, our teams work together to provide the products, services and expertise farmers and cooperatives need to feed a growing population. As a CHS employee, you help empower agriculture by creating connections that bring shared success.
Strawberry fields
Cristina Waltner and her brother, Tom Shane, have been selling strawberries at stands across northwestern Washington for nearly 40 years.
“There is nothing like a freshly picked strawberry,” says Cristina Waltner as she plucks a plump red berry from a sea of green leaves and gently places it in her box. “Washington berries have wonderful flavor, but they’re very fragile.”
Taking advantage of demand for locally produced fruits and vegetables, Waltner and her brother, Tom Shane, sell their just-picked organic and conventional strawberries at stands across northwestern Washington. “We’ve been selling berries directly to consumers since the ’70s,” says Waltner, “mostly around the Mount Vernon area.”
This year, the siblings have stands at Skagit Farmers Supply stores in Burlington and Stanwood, Wash. “It’s a great way to increase traffic to the store and the stand,” says Burlington store manager Allene Stuller.
Waltner and Shane raise an assortment of organic crops on their farm in Skagit Valley, including strawberries, cucumbers, green beans, pumpkins, barley and broccoli. They also grow a variety of conventional crops, including blueberries, a Washington staple.
The brother-and-sister-duo sources organic and conventional fertilizer from Skagit Farmers Supply and the co-op provides custom application services to keep their berries and vegetables healthy.
Waltner was elected to the Skagit Farmers Supply five-person board of directors in 2017. She leads a busy life, raising two teenage children, co-managing the family farm, and growing potatoes and grass seed for a separate business with Shane and her husband, Brian. But she says her role on the Skagit board is just as important.
“Farming has been part of our family for three generations,” she says. “We need to stay involved if we want farming and our community to continue thriving.”