SIKESTON -- The Sikeston Regional Chamber held its annual Farmers Banquet Thursday evening and honored a young local farmer as well as an agricultural enterprise.
Being honored as the 2018 Outstanding Young Farmer of the Year was Zach Bell. Growing up in a farming family, Bell went to college as a "back-up plan" and obtained a degree in agriculture business with a focus on plant and soil science from Southeast Missouri State University.
After graduation, he still wasn't sure that farming was what he wanted to do and considered law school, and in the middle of taking the LSAT, realized farming was his future.
Farming full-time for over a decade, Bell has learned from his dad and other seasoned farmers. He has served on various committees and currently sits on the Missouri Farm Bureau Rice Advisory Council.
Bell is married to Madeline and has two daughters, Pricilla, 6, and Camilla, who turned on 4 on Thursday.
The 2018 Agricultural Enterprise of the Year went to MRM Farms. Deeply rooted in Mississippi County dating back more than 100 years, Milas Mainord not only farmed but started a fertilizer and chemical supply company in 1964 serving area farmers for many years.
After his father's death in 1979, Mainord stepped in to manage the farm and service company for his family and the company continued to grow. In 1985, Mainord formed MRM Farms and in 1991 Fieldin LaPlant, Mainord's brother-in-law, joined him in managing the company, serving as operations manager, a role which he still holds today.
In 2000 the Mainord family consolidated into its current ownership: Milas and Barbara Mainord, Fieldin and Laura LaPlant and Mickey and Karen Lay.In 2015 the family further consolidated its farming operations by selling its agronomy business, MRM Ag Services LLC to Sanders.
Today the family continues to farm Mississippi, New Madrid and Scott Counties and Miles Mainord and Fieldin LaPlant also co-own Yellow Gold Irrigation - Reinke Center Pivots, where Field LaPlant (Fieldin's son) also serves as operations manager and MRM farm crop scout.
Photos from the banquet will appear in an upcoming edition of the Standard Democrat.