YUKON, Okla. (AP)--Leaders of Oklahoma's oldest grain-buying co-op have decided to liquidate the organization and sell its four grain elevators as urban encroachment and competition from other buyers have made the giant storage structures obsolete.

Mid-Oklahoma Cooperative, which was incorporated in 1906, is selling its two grain elevators in Yukon and two smaller ones in Piedmont.

"Over the past few years, land has gone for urban development. We've lost a lot of farm ground," said Stan Hillius, interim manager of the co-op, based in Kingfisher.

The Yukon elevators, with a capacity of 2 million bushels, never stored more than 200,000 bushels at last harvest, he said. The properties are listed for $1.75 million.

Hillius said some of the excess space was the result of competition with other grain buyers. The loss of farmland, however, is the long-term reason for the Piedmont and Yukon elevators' troubles, he said.

"We've lost several quarters of Wheat ground to houses the past couple of years," said Leon Meyer of Overland Express Realty in Piedmont. "I don't see it slowing down."

Mid-Oklahoma's properties also include farm stores in Yukon and Piedmont. Hillius said they accounted for no more than 5 percent of the co-op's business.

"I know a lot of Yukon residents are really going to miss it," said Sandy Meier, executive director of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce. She said she bought cottonseed mulch from the co-op every spring for landscaping.

Meier said Yukon leaders hope the elevator--or at least the farm store--will be bought by someone who reopens it.

"Hopefully, they'll sell it and it will remain as the (center of) our downtown agriculture business," she said.