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Mission Statement
It is our goal
to provide the best possible commodities to our
customers. Whether your
buying corn seed or corn on the cob; Filet
Mignon or fertilizer, you are
getting the best because we have done
our best.
Feeding the world since 1967.
Lanny and Rita Bezner and Family
"You can take the boy out of the country,
but you cant take the country out of the boy,”
kind of explains what happened to Lanny and Rita
Bezner and their family. Lanny was raised on a
farm at Bushland, Texas. He attended school In
Amarillo. Rita Albracht Bezner was raised on a
farm near Hereford, Texas. Lanny and Rita met at
Lanny’s Uncle Frank’s house while Lanny was working
there during the summer of 1962 between his sophomore
and junior years of college. The summer of 1963,
Lanny and Rita were married. While finishing college,
Lanny worked as a grocery stocker and butcher at
Furrs, Inc. and Rita worked at the Texas Tech Press.
Lanny completed college and earned a degree in Ag
Education with a minor in entomology. In 1964, their
first son, John, was born in Hereford.
As Lanny started looking for Ag teacher positions
at schools, they quickly found out there were very
few openings available. An opportunity to teach at
Nazareth became available, but since Rita was related
to most of the school board members, the job was off
limits. Lanny was offered the assistant Ag teacher job
at Boys Ranch under Guy Finstaad. After much consideration,
the family decision was made not to take the offer. Rita,
being 20 years old with a 12 month old baby, didn’t think s
he had the maturity to become a house parent at Boys Ranch.
So, the Bezner’s future took a 90-degree turn. Lanny took a
job with Western Ammonia, an anhydrous manufacturing plant
in Dimmit, in 1966. This same year, their first daughter,
Virginia, was born. After a few years, they moved to
Hereford where Lanny took a position with Hereford Brand
Chemical Company. Lanny traveled the Texas Panhandle, Eastern
New Mexico and Oklahoma as a technical representative.
In 1968, Brian, their second son was born. Through a progression
of company buyouts, Lanny ended up a partner in Tri-State
Chemical Company, the surviving entity of Hereford Brand Chemical.
In 1969 the Bezners bought a section of land in
Dallam County from Bill Hunter. During the February
1971 blizzard in Hereford, Robin, their second daughter
was born. In 1973, Lanny and Rita sold their interest in
Tri-State Chemical, stopped feeding cattle in Hereford
and moved to Dalhart and became full-time farmers, later
mixing cattle into the operation. “We then began growing
our family and farm,” said Rita. Their third daughter,
Amanda, was born in 1975 in Dalhart. Their youngest child,
Mark, was born in 1981.
As the Bezner family grew, so did their farm.
Currently,
the Bezners own 11,500 acres of cultivated farmland and
lease approximately 55,000 acres of grassland in various
parts of New Mexico. Four of their six children work in
the family business day to day. John manages the cattle.
He takes care of 5,000 head of stockers in their pre-
conditioning lot. Brian handles the grain marketing,
manages the elevator and farming operation. In 1998,
Virginia and her husband, Frank, joined the team. Virginia
takes care of the elevator office and farm accounting.
Frank operates the sprinklers and the elevator during
harvest. Mark devotes much of his time to the various
farming decisions, along with the others. Mark also oversees
the chemical application and the trucking end of the business.
Their daughter Robin, is a fifth grade school teacher and
Amanda is a pharmaceutical representative with Berlex Corp.
They both live in Lubbock. Rita says, “We are very much a
family operation. We could not have achieved this without
God’s blessing. We have been blessed with hailstorms, and
the very next year have had very good yields. We have had
many faithful employees throughout the years as well.”
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