OUTSTANDING FARMERS 2025: Yield-Plus Inc. named 2024 Outstanding Ag Business in Southeast Missouri

SCOTT CITY — Southeast Missouri is ripe with acreage, farming and farm suppliers.

And one area supplier has been crowned the 2024 Outstanding Ag Business — Yield-Plus, Inc. Three Rivers College will recognize Yield-Plus, Inc. and others being honored during a dinner Friday at the Westwood Event Center.

“It is a pretty neat accomplishment. I didn’t even know there was anything going on with Three Rivers and the agriculture program,” said plant manager Darren Roper, who is in his 17th year with the company. “It was one thing to be nominated, and it was another to actually win it.”

A former employee and current Three Rivers agriculture student supplied the nomination.

“I guess he is the one who nominated,” Roper said of Andrew Dennis. “I didn’t know they were building the Ag program at Three Rivers. I am excited it is going on.”

While the recognition and the acclaim are nice, Yield-Plus proprietor Roger Smith prefers to operate under the radar — showcasing the company’s humility over another bullet point on the company’s profile.

“Roger kind of likes keeping it low-key,” Roper said. “We are a company that makes and sells liquid fertilizer. We like to call ourselves plant food because, for one, we use food grain material instead of all spec material. That is the thing, it is Yield-Plus liquid plant food. A lot of people call it fertilizer, and we even do on some of our stuff.”

The company has been in business for more than four decades and continues to thrive as a staple in Scott City.

“Yield-Plus is owned by Roger Smith, a high-school graduate from Puxico. He started his business in 1984 with two partners and then went out on his own in 1986, and now he is up to about 20 employees, selling liquid fertilizer in 25 states,” Roper said.

Economic times have hit the farming industry just as hard, with rising costs in overhead, and such inflation has been difficult to maneuver for rural companies.

Yield-Plus, though, has been able to navigate those choppy waters.

Said Roper: “Good business sense and trying to read and deal with the markets.”