Larry Inman, co-owner

Ag-Bag Forage Solutions

92365 Riekkola Road

Astoria

503-325-2985 or

ltucker@ag-bagfs.com

Ag-Bag Solutions, based out of Jeffers Gardens, is a local and international company, all at the same time. Ag-Bag International Ltd. was sold to Miller St. Nazianz Inc. of Wisconsin in 2004, but the local outlet still sells its equipment along with tractors and lawn mowers. It also provides service on farm equipment and can be found online at ag-bagfs.com

What do you do?

We sell farm equipment, from the home and garden person selling lawn mowers all the way up to 250-horsepower tractors to suit the dairy farms, beef farms all the way from Tillamook to Olympia (Wash.) all the way to the Idaho border. Plus, we sell the bagging equipment that we used to sell from when we were at the airport. We still sell the Ag-Bag line of bags and Ag-Bag line of equipment to a lot of beef and dairy farmers all over the country. I am the owner, and we have five employees that take the orders and work with the customers, making it a family event.

How did you get started doing this?

We were involved with Ag-Bag until it got sold to the company in Wisconsin. We already had 600 or so customers as a customer base. We went out and got involved in the hay and forage equipment, buying and selling tractors and balers and rakes and tenders. We got into selling lawn mowers, but just for the local service people, because a lot of our customers were still looking for something else. Weve been here now seven years and its been doing well.

What is the volume of your business?

We have a roughly 600 customer base that we in a large area, not just locally. We also sell equipment internationally to Puerto Rico, Argentina, Japan, Mexico, out of here. The Ag-Bag side is probably 40 percent of our business; the tractor sales and implements are 40 percent; and then the lawn and garden makes up the rest. It is seasonal. It starts now spring and goes through the fall. Then we have a service department to fix anything from lawn mowers to big tractors, and thats pretty steady year-round.

How does the economy affect your business?

Three years ago was pretty tough. Nobody was buying anything, especially in the ag department. When the price of milk was very low, it was very tough. But that has turned in the last six months. The thing I suppose for us was the low interest rate helped people get financing and buy equipment, 0 percent on the tractors as far as financing. Its picked up quite a bit in the last three months. The price of beef and milk are the biggest things that affect our business. The price of milk to the end producer has been pretty low over the last four years, so now it has turned a little bit.