Helena Agri-Enterprises LLC

West Des Moines, Iowa

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Helena Agri-Enterprises, LLC is a national company headquartered in Tennessee and has been a part of ACWA since its inception in 1999(?). Helena has seven Iowa locations and a wholesale group in Ankeny that serves the Iowa branches.

Helena offers its customers an array of crop inputs, including fertilizer, seed, and chemicals. Helena Products Group has developed and formulated many of its products. The company is a leader in precision agriculture, offering services such as soil and tissue sampling, yield analysis, variable rate application recommendations, custom applications, and more. A subsidiary, Helena Industries, LLC, includes a facility in Des Moines that manufactures Helena products.

Being a part of ACWA is important to Helena’s employees as well as their customers. The company is committed to its customers’ success through sustainable farming practices for the producer and the environment. With ACWA, Helena’s staff can share their knowledge and resources with their peers and learn from them. The company knows that the impact made together is much greater than what can be achieved individually.

Helena’s involvement with ACWA carries a greater awareness and understanding throughout the company about the practices farmers and landowners use for soil health and water quality, such as bioreactors and buffer strips.

AGRIntelligence and GrowLink are part of Helena’s precision agriculture portfolio and contribute to improving soil and water quality. These programs help growers understand the needs of their crop and allow them to practice the 4Rs of nutrient management: the right amount, the right products, in the right place, at the right time. Helena’s products are designed to improve the efficiency of fertilizer and chemicals, often reducing the amount needed to achieve the same result. All of this contributes to maximizing benefits to the crop and minimizing excess nutrient loads to water bodies.

Another practice contributing to soil health and water quality comes from Helena’s Osage branch, which provides a custom strip-tillage service to its customers. The branch has offered this service since 2000 and has continued to do so after Helena acquired the business in 2016. Strip-tillage is a method of tilling the soil but leaving much of the row untouched. It allows soil organic matter to build and slows erosion because of the remaining crop biomass on the soil surface, reducing sediment and nutrients entering waterbodies.

Helena Agri-Enterprises is proud to be a part of ACWA and supports its mission through its employees’ and customers’ actions. Being an ACWA member has created a mechanism for Helena employees and their customers to be accountable for maintaining good stewardship practices on the landscape.