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A truck leaves the Archer Daniels Midland Co. East Plant in Decatur on Thursday. It is one of a constant line of truck and train traffic that comes to and from the plant on a daily basis. Decatur has been an essential part of ADM's growth during its 120 year history.
Construction crews work on an expansion of the ADM Science and Technology Center in Decatur on Thursday. It's one of many ongoing projects being undertaken by the company in Decatur.
The North American headquarters of Archer Daniels Midland Co. is pictured in Decatur. The building, which has changed dramatically over the years, served as the company's world headquarters from 1969 to 2014.
Construction crews work on an expansion of the ADM Science and Technology Center in Decatur on Thursday.
Workers walk out of the North American regional headquarters of ADM in Decatur on Thursday.
DECATUR — The rich prairie soil of Decatur grows the world’s finest crops and has helped cultivate an extraordinary company dedicated to feeding the world and improving the lives of everyone, Archer Daniels Midland Co.
ADM is celebrating the 120th anniversary of its founding and the city of Decatur can’t imagine life without it. With 4,000 workers on the payroll, the vast processor of corn and soybeans — and many other crops — is Decatur’s biggest employer and a major cultivator of new business ventures and opportunities.
The city council is so pleased with the company that it declared Friday “ADM Day” with an official proclamation read by Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe. She told the Herald & Review that what is good for ADM has always been good for the city she represents.
“It's a great partnership we have with the company because ADM wants Decatur to do well and the community matters to them,” said Moore Wolfe.
“And, likewise ADM doing well matters to us: We want them to grow in Decatur and thrive.”
And thriving has become an ADM specialty. The business seed that grew into the company was planted in Minneapolis in 1902 when a business odd couple — George Archer and John Daniels — founded a new venture to produce linseed oil.
Archer was “a quiet man and a deliberate planner,” according to ADM’s own archives, while Daniels was “outgoing and brash.” This polar attraction of opposites fermented into a winning business formula as the two founders sat at facing roll top desks amid the linseed aroma and grinding noise from the plant’s presses. The firm added the “Midland” bit to its name in 1923 by merging with the Midland Linseed Products Company.
The founders were so cost-conscious in those early days they carefully saved envelopes from incoming correspondence to use as scratch paper. By 1939 the company had expanded into agricultural product processing in Decatur and, steadily over the last 120 years, into operations in more than 20 other countries.
Today, ADM most definitely doesn’t have to seek scratch paper from used envelopes. Its revenue for the 12 months ended in June topped more than $94 billion, a healthy 25.95% jump year-over-year.
Chris Cuddy, a senior vice president and the most senior corporate officer based in Decatur, said the operations in the city and Central Illinois are a big part of ADM’s success.
BEST SOIL ON THE PLANET
He said the founders were attracted here by “the best soil on the planet” and Decatur’s central location at the intersection of major railroads have always proved ideal growing conditions for his company.
“Frankly, from here you can get to anywhere in North America,” said Cuddy, 48, and now in his 24th year with ADM.
Cuddy said Decatur operations have seen constant investment and expansion and the complex of facilities represents the company’s largest complex anywhere in the world and serves as its North American headquarters.
Cuddy said the 4,000 people who work for it in Decatur represents 10% of ADM’s 40,000-strong global workforce. “The biggest corn (processing) plant in the system and the biggest corn plant in the world is sitting outside my office window,” he added.
“We have two soy processing plants here, we have a cogeneration plant to make our own power, make our own steam, we treat our own water from Lake Decatur and we have a wastewater plant. So we’re like our own little city here and it’s a really unique position that ADM has built in Decatur.”
Cuddy’s full corporate title includes being president of ADM’s carbohydrate solutions business, which he said explains a lot of what goes on processing-wise in the Decatur operations. “Carbohydrate solutions is essentially the global corn processing and global flour milling business of ADM, and we are the ones transforming those crops into foods and fuels and industrial uses,” he added.
“So think flour for bread, think ethanol for your car, think sweetener for your favorite soft drink and starch in your food or paper applications; that’s really what drives this part of the business.”
Company-wide, ADM’s products fly off in all directions. From sustainable food products for people and animals to turning crops into materials that can be used in everything from packaging to construction. And then there's the production of biodiesel, ethanol, solvents, industrial oils, starches, fertilizers, solvents, nutrients and on and on and on.
Cuddy said ADM is pushing the envelope of the possible right here in Decatur with a revamped Science and Technology Center and many other facilities, like a new Animal Nutrition Technology Center.
“We spend about $1 billion in capital spending a year globally and you can figure that with Decatur home to one of our biggest complexes in the world, it gets a big piece of that,” Cuddy said.
BRINGING THE WORLD TO DECATUR
And now we’re seeing increasing capital spending flowing in from the outside, too. New companies are coming to Decatur, attracted by the presence of ADM and its products and processes, and the fresh arrivals bring jobs and investment with them.
The list includes insect protein plant Innovafeed and South Korean firm LG Chem, a chemical company that is expected to create 125 new jobs. For those who spend their waking hours trying to lure new firms to Decatur and Macon County, the magnetic attraction of ADM to other companies represents a very big ace in the hole.
“ADM’s commitment to research, facility expansions and infrastructure developments have brought much investment to Decatur across many decades,” said Nicole Bateman, president of the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur-Macon County.
“Their focus on innovation and sustainability have most recently introduced new international companies to Decatur. These collaborations bring tremendous growth potential for our community.”
And beyond the bottom line, Bateman noted other advantages flow from having the company here. She said the wider community has benefited from ADM’s charitable investments and the willingness of its workers to give of themselves.
Perhaps there is no better example of that than ADM Cares, billed as the company’s “corporate social investment program.” When ADM launched a “Fight Hunger Challenge” as part of its 120th anniversary celebrations, ADM Cares ended up donating 1.2 million meals in partnership with the World Food Program, Feeding America and Food Banks Canada.
“ADM’s philanthropic investments in many of the causes that address the needs of communities in the region cannot be overlooked,” Bateman added.
“I’m grateful that Decatur is ADM’s home, and I look forward to another century of developments from this outstanding organization.”
Those developments continue to come thick and fast and some of them lie buried more than a mile beneath the Decatur prairie. Cuddy said the company has pioneered the new science of carbon sequestration, storing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide underground, leading to plans to develop a zero-emission gas power plant here.
He said ADM’s work on sequestration showed how progressive and “forward leaning” the company is in its outlook.
“A lot of people are trying to do this (sequestration) themselves now and they will be successful,” he added. “But they are looking at what we did here with the Department of Energy and the Illinois Geological Survey as the model for how to do this.”
It’s a stunning track record of innovation and industry-leading development over the last century and a quarter, but even in the prairie products Garden of Eden there was once a serpent. Some top ADM corporate executives were tempted to fix the price of the animal feed additive lysine in the 1990s as part of a global cabal and it led to the firm paying a $100 million criminal fine ($70 million for lysine price fixing, and another $30 million for a separate conspiracy involving citric acid), the largest antitrust penalty ever leveled by the Department of Justice at the time.
Two of those leading executives, Michael Andreas and Terrance Wilson, went to prison. A third, the whistle-blower on the whole scheme, Mark Whitacre, got 2 1/2 years for his role and another nine years for looting millions of dollars from the company. Whitacre was played by Matt Damon in the 2009 movie “The Informant!” based on what happened.
All that now lies in the past and Cuddy said he was insulted that anybody would seek to question the integrity of the ADM of today, a company he is very proud to be associated with. He said no firm gets to be 120 years old without earning the trust of the customers it serves and the world it does business with.
“So whether there were bumps along the way or not, you had better be doing things right to make it to 120 years, that cannot be disputed,” he said.
He also cited the kind of headlines ADM earns these days: this year it was named to the list of the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” for the third year in a row by Ethisphere, a non-profit company which “defines and measures” corporate ethical standards.
And also in 2022, ADM was chosen to be listed as one of FORTUNE magazine’s Most Admired Companies for the 14th consecutive year. It’s also honored on another FORTUNE list for companies that changed the world, cited for leadership in the “plant-based protein space.”
Cuddy points out that ADM began producing textured vegetable protein at its Decatur East Plant in 1966. By 1970 it had obtained a patent for the first plant-based meat alternative and the company cooked up the first “veggie burger” in 1991, a development that ADM describes as triggering “the plant-based revolution of today” with regards to what we eat.
Cuddy said it all adds up to an honest, hard-working company that takes the crops grown by the American farmer and processes them into food and products that both feed the world and yield sustainable technology to move civilization forward, and even move it around. He mentions, for example, being “really excited” about pioneering work now being done to further refine corn-based ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel.
He said the ADM operations in Decatur are a key part of the company’s never-ending cycle of product development as it stakes its claim to the future while pausing on its 120 anniversary to celebrate past milestones.
“We keep trying to reinvent ourselves so that we're around for another 120 years,” Cuddy said.
1989: Tom Dahman of Lincoln sits atop his trailer to get a view of the line at ADM.
1984: Firefighters and ADM workers (right) ease a basked containing Robert Coan down a ladder against the ‘head house’ of an ADM storage silo on Friday, June 8, 1984. Plant manager Coan of Decatur and Ray Mudd of Oakley were investigating a smoke odor when an explosion occurred in a dust collector. Robert Coan died July 12 of his injuries.
1984: Emergency personnel help Ray Mudd down a stairway at the ADM plant following an explosion. Mudd, 34, of rural Oakley, was one of two workers injured.
1977: Decatur Fire Department personnel work at the scene of a grain dust explosion at ADM.
1977: On the morning of Aug. 30, 1977, ADM employees were crowded into a cinder block building at ADM’s north plant when it exploded. The fire and explosion resulted in injuries to six men, including Steve Huffman, then 20 years old.
1977: Another look at the concrete building that collapsed at ADM’s north plant during an explosion in 1977.
1939: Before the oil is taken out of soybeans at the A-D-M- plant they are rolled and flaked. Here is Frank Copenhaver at a rolling machine.
1968: The “world’s largest” soybean extracting unity was put into operation Sept. 1, 1968 by Archer Daniels Midland Co. The huge new facility at the Decatur west plant is still incomplete, but the finishing touches are being applied. This gleaming new extractor can process up to 80,000 bushels of soybeans per day. Lowell W. Andreas, ADM president in 1968, said the target date for completion of company expansion in Decatur is “never.”
1939: Lewis Jones operates a machine which sews up bags that have been filled with soybean meal by the “sacker” in the background. At the sacking machine is Harry Vest.
1939: Parker Post, left, and Donald Thompson, A-D-M employees, fasten down the “cap” of a railroad tank car that has just been filled with soybean oil.
This previously unpublished photo shows an ADM plant worker hauling bags of soybeans.
1939: This previously unpublished photo shows ADM workers unloading bags of soybeans.
1991: Stacy Need, market communications manager, hoists a box of ADM's veggie burger mix. ADM sells about 5,000 veggie burgers daily to customers of a Moscow restaurant, and is giving the Soviet McDonald's a run for its money.
1989: Herb Childress of Ashmore, Chuck Winnett of Charleston and Floyd Hupp of Westfield do some chatting.
1990: From left, 'veggie burger' plant manager Gary Bingham and ADM official Ron Ferrari display a vat of the mix to Romanian officials.
1982: Researchers at ADM use an extruder to make texture vegetable protein from soy flour.
1990: Joan Godbey, manager of executive and research kitchens for ADM, displays the forms soy protein burger takes.
1940: Ten truckloads of wildflowers are being planted along the spillway from the Archer Daniels Midland Co. soybean plant, through Faries Park to Lake Decatur. The planting is being done by Decatur Park District workers to beautify the stream that carries water from the soybean mill to the lake. The spillway was constructed by the Park District last fall, and has a series of waterfalls making in one of the showplaces of the country. Bluebells, hepatica, violets, May apples, wild sweet william and several varieties of ferns are being planted. (H&R file photo)
1977: The clarifier, the third step in the treatment process, will remove sludge from waste generated by the Archer Daniels Midland Co. complex. (H&R file photo)
1978: Archer Daniels Midland Co. hosted 31 visitors from the Republic of China. These Chinese officials sampled soybean based products during their visit. (H&R file photo)
1984: Bob Ryan of Archer Daniels Midland Co. explains lettuce production in a hydroponics greenhouse to group of National Outstanding Young Farmer candidates. (H&R file photo)
1967: As part of the Archer Daniels Midland Co. West Plant expansion, 1900 Samuels St., three 15,000-barrel tanks are being moved. The tank at left base. In order to move the tanks, a dike was built and the channel lined with 30,000 square feet of plastic. Water was then pumped into it so the tanks could be floated. At bottom right, a truck tows one of the 50-ton oil tanks down the canal. When the expansion was announced, it was to double the facilities. (H&R file photo)
1942: Cars are parked outside of Archer Daniels Midland Co.
Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid
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A truck leaves the Archer Daniels Midland Co. East Plant in Decatur on Thursday. It is one of a constant line of truck and train traffic that comes to and from the plant on a daily basis. Decatur has been an essential part of ADM's growth during its 120 year history.
Construction crews work on an expansion of the ADM Science and Technology Center in Decatur on Thursday. It's one of many ongoing projects being undertaken by the company in Decatur.
The North American headquarters of Archer Daniels Midland Co. is pictured in Decatur. The building, which has changed dramatically over the years, served as the company's world headquarters from 1969 to 2014.
Construction crews work on an expansion of the ADM Science and Technology Center in Decatur on Thursday.
Workers walk out of the North American regional headquarters of ADM in Decatur on Thursday.
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