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| Before its recent merger with Cenex to form Cenex Harvest States, Harvest States was a $7.1 billion agri/foods cooperative involved in grain marketing, food processing, farm supplies and business services. Working with a large network of local, producer-owned cooperatives in the Upper Midwest, Plains States and Pacific Northwest, the company has customers throughout the nation and around the world. |
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Challenge To use the annual report to emphasize the wide array of services and programs the cooperative offers to producers and local farmer cooperatives and how these members use the services to benefit their individual operations. The company wanted to call special attention to a new investment program in which eligible producers and local cooperatives could participate. |
Solutions The annual report was built around a report-within-a-report format that included vignettes on individual farmers and local cooperatives, all of whom were investors as well as users of other Harvest States services and programs. In the vignettes, the company's performance, services and other benefits were communicated with photo montages centering on the featured individuals and large displays of key words accompanying the text. Thus, the overall message was conveyed on several levels. |