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VOL 30 No. 49
An aerial view of Sperry New Holland's manufacturing plant in New Holland
Ford buys Sperry New Holland
NEW HOLLAND - Ford Motor
Company has reached agreement
to purchase Sperry New Holland,
culminating months of rumor and
speculation about the joining of the
two ag machine giants.
The beleaguered New Holland
firm had fallen on rough times
over the past several years, as
farm equipment purchases fell in
the face of declining commodity
prices.
The deal with Ford, however, is
being touted as an ideal marriage
of two farm equipment
manufacturers, with Ford’s line of
tractors matching New Holland’s
line of haying and harvesting
equipment, including combines
New Holland does not make
tractors while Ford has none of the
diversity of the New Holland line
Ford will pay $330 million for
New Holland’s worldwide assets
and assume $llO million in the
firm’s liabilities. The purchase is
expected to be closed by the end of
the year.
SHEEP: A shot in the arm for red meat industry?
BY JACK RUBLE Y
LITITZ With beef and pork
producers wallowing in a
depressed market, lamb may
prove to be the crucial ingredient
needed to flesh out the barebones
red meat industry.
The light at the end of the tunnel
is being provided by Rocco Inc. of
Timberville, Va. Well known for its
huge Marval turkey processing
Plant in Dayton, Va., Rocco Inc., is
actually made up of eight
divisions, including Rocco Further
Processing and the Rocco Lamb
Parm.
Although one-half of the further
processing plant is devoted to
Poultry products, the remaining
half has been busily processing
3.000 lambs a week since beginning
operations in August.
According to Rocco’s lamb
Procurement manager, Dennis
Four Sections
Holland operation will
become part of Ford’s tractor
operations based in Troy, MI. The
automaker said it will retain New
Holland’s plants, employees and
brand name.
Hard times have befallen the
New Holland company over the
past five years, with sharp
declines in revenues and profits.
Sales of $1 billion and profits of
$lOO million m 1980 had declined to
$715 million in revenue and $l7
million In income before taxes in
the year which ended March 31.
Ford, meanwhile, has annual
sales of $1.25 billion, giving the new
entity a $2 billion capacity with
more than 18,000 employees and
sales outlets in more than 100
countries.
To cope with hard times, Sperry
New Holland laid off more than
1,000 workers, unveiled new
products, froze pay increases, cut
overtime and marketed parts for
other manufacturers.
Products manufactured at the
Miller, the company hopes to
eventually be slaughtering 10,000
lambs a week. “It takes about
300,000 ewes to make this plant
work,” says Miller.
Why did Rocco elect to plunge
headlong into the lamb market 9
"It’s a very wholesome product,”
says Miller. “It has the least
amount of cholesterol of any red
meat.’” And with 80 percent of the
nation’s lamb consumed in the
Northeast, locating a slaughtering
plant here is a logical move, he
says. “We’re at a definite location
advantage because of the time
interval to market. ”
Though much of Australia and
New Zealand’s lamb production
finds its way to the United States,
“we just don't think they can
compete shipping a frozen
product," Miller says. “The
biggest thing they have that we
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 12,1985
firm’s New Holland plant include
the square and round balers, bale
throwers, and grinder-mixers. The
company also makes round balers,
bale handlers, mower
conditioners, loaders and running
gear at its Mountville plant.
Founded in 1895, New Holland in
1940 bought the rights to
manufacture a revolutionary new
hay baler invented by a Lancaster
County farmer. The product was
the first commercially successful,
automatic-pickup, self-tie device,
and made baling hay a one-man
job.
The New Holland Machine Co.
was purchased by Sperry Corp. in
1947, eventually becoming the
world’s largest manufacturer of
specialized farm equipment,
especially devices to harvest hay
and silage.
The parent Sperry Corp
reportedly will go its own way in
computer and electronic
businesses
don’t is supply.”
Though Rocco wants to see ewe
numbers increase in the Nor
theast, Miller stresses that
quantity is not the number-one
consideration. The firm is looking
for lean carcasses in the 110 to 115-
pound range. “We’re yield grading
lambs, and we re the first plant in
the country to do that,” says
Miller, noting that carcasses of
yield grade two and three are what
the company is looking for. “We’re
trying to produce what the
housewife wants,” he says.
But to keep its facility running at
capacity, Rocco needs a year
round supply of lambs, says Miller.
Unfortunately, this is an order that
an industry traditionally oriented
to spring lambing is hard-pressed
to fill.
One Pennsylvania firm that’s
making a commitment to
House approves
1985 Farm Bill
BY JAMES H. EVERHART
WASHINGTON - The U.S.
House of Representatives has
approved a controversial 1985
Farm Bill, setting the stage for a
confrontration with the U.S.
Senate, and ultimately, with the
Reagan Administration.
The bill approved by the House
includes provisions that retain
much of the current farm program
for basic commodity products. The
bill would have little of the
structural change in farm policy
that all sides in the Farm Bill
debate have requested.
The package does not include the
controversial Bedell Amendment,
which was stricken from the bill on
the House floor. Under the
proposal, offered by lowa
Congressman Berkley Bedell,
wheat, feed grain, cotton and rice
producers could vote to accept
voluntary acreage controls in
exchange for higher prices.
The Senate, meanwhile, was
expected to start its consideration
of the Farm Bill before Oct. 21.
Deliberation on the legislation was
delayed by the budget debate,
which occupied the upper house
longer than expected. The package
approved by the Senate
Agriculture committee differs
markedly from the package ap
proved by the House, especially on
dairy policy.
The Farm Bill package ap
proved in the House contained a
dairy title which would establish
standby authority for a diversion
program, and include a cost-of
production formula in its support
pricing mechanism.
USDA Secretary John Block has
threatened to recommend a
presidential veto if the Congress
passes a bill containing diversion
authority. He said a diversion
program would impose a “cruel.
providing Rocco with a year-round
supply of lambs is Wolgemuth
Bros. Inc., of Mount Joy, Lan
caster County. A general line feed
company, Wolgemuth hopes to
expand its poultry contracting
business to include sheep. The firm
currently has 900 lambs on feed in
Lebanon County.
According to Wolgemuth’s sales
manager, Bill Reed, the Rocco
plant may be a real boon to Penn
sylvania livestock producers. “If
they have the facilities, they can
conceivably put in 100 ewes and
produce 150 lambs a year, or
more,” says Reed, calculating that
such a move could result in $3,000
or more in added income. “But
producers have to like sheep;
there’s a lot of work involved with
them,” Reed cautions.
Underlining Reed’s words of
caution is Ford Hartman,
$7.50 per Year
compulsory assessment on
dairymen.”
In adopting the measure, the
House rejected an amendment,
adopted on the floor just last week,
establishing a 50-cent-per
hundredweight cap on
assessments.
The legislators, however,
retained an amendment em
powering USDA to make one
million pounds of nonfat dry milk
available for casein production. An
open bid among manufacturers
would be used to distribute the
products.
Other amendments to the dairy
title prevent the USDA from
considering whey in their estimate
of milk price supports, and raised
the government’s red meat pur
chase during any diversion
program to 250 million pounds.
_ shjg bill drafted by the- Senate
Agriculture Committee follows the
“rharket orientation” the Ad
ministration has called for in its
original proposals. It would lower
prices unjil the government’s
dairy purchases dropped below
five million pounds annually.
Currently, they are running about
12 million pounds.
The wide differences between
the two bills, officials said, in
dicate a need for extensive
negotiations between the two
houses. The two sides are expected
to hold conferences on the Farm
Bill after the Senate enacts its
version of the legislation. That
would put the Ag Committee
leaders of both legislative bodies in
conference by the first week in
November, observers noted.
Congress has a srff-imposed
deadline of Nov. 14 on their
legislative efforts. They extended
expiring agricultural legislation on
Oct. 1, to prevent provisions of the
1933 enabling legislation from
going back into effect.
Wolgemuth’s newly appointed
sheep specialist. Hartman says
that Wolgemuth will be buying the
breeding stock to place with
selected producers who will have
to adhere to the firm’s
management guidelines.
“We’re going to require an in
tensive management system with
our ewes,” says Hartman. “You
don’t just put them out on pasture
and hope they get bred and have a
lamb.”
The key to Wolgemuth’s
program will be in acquiring ewes
capable of being bred throughout
the year. “The problem is that a lot
of the lamb goes to market one
time of the year,” says Hartman.
“At other times there’s a scarcity
and a packing facility can’t stay'in
business. They need a constant
supply of lamb, and the only way to
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