Customers Offer Growers Tips ST. LOUIS, Mo. The lat est USDA estimate indicates fanners will harvest more than nine billion bushels of com this year. But current high prices and continued high demand for com demonstrates the neces sity of market expansion. "Using com for industrial uses is a relatively small busi ness right now. But it’s grow ing at a faster rate than the Gross National Product (GNP) and new com product creation is expanding to keep up,” said William Powell, group vice president of food product and industrial starch at National Starch and Chemical Corpora tion. The New Jersey-based com pany produces high value products from com, such as ad hesives for food package labels and book bindings. During a keynote address at the sixth biennial Cbm Utiliza tion Conference (CUC) VI, hosted by the National Com Growers Association (NOGA). Powell said creation of new markets will result in competi tion between agricultural com modities, petrochemicals and synthetic ingredients. Dale Jackson, vice president of marketing for Continental Grain in Chicago, told CICIV participants the producer be comes the critical person in the marketing chain, “Value-added grain production requires a product mindset by the produc er versus a commodity men tality we are all so used to,” said Jackson. Value-added grain, accord ing to Jackson, is a product with special attributes to meet end-users’ requirements. For Let H€RSH€V M EQUIPMENT CO., INC. do the work! New expanded services from Hershey Equipment include feed mill construction and expansion. Let us do the work and design your storage and handling systems. We have our own experienced crews for service and installation. TT€RSH€V ■■■ EQUIPMENT CO., INC. SYCAMORE IND. PARK 255 PLANE TREE DRIVE LANCASTER, PA 17603 (717)393-5807 example. Continental gives com growers who meet the company's harvest and hand ling requirements a 10-ccnt premium per bushel for com with hard endosperm charac teristics. Cereal and beer manufacturers like the larger flakes produced from hard en dosperm com. The company also provides growers a market for com that exhibits a high starch content for use in indus trial products like plastics and high oil com for livestock feed. Crop analysts expect almost 80 percent of this year’s crop to be fed to livestock and poultry. Dr. Brian Hardy, a feed nutri tionist at Premium Standard Farms in Missouri, continually evaluates com for its cost-ef fective ability to meet nutrient specifications for livestock. Hardy identifies the fat, pro tein, fiber, carbohydrate and mineral content of each feed ingredient. “The nutrient requirements of farm livestock are changing due to genetic improvements, concerns over the environment and demands for healthier, saf er food products by the con sumer. Identification of the nu trient factors important in ani- mal nutrition and a better understanding of how feed in gredients are evaluated will al low the plant geneticist/grower and animal nutritionist/farmer to work together to develop and use modified com varieties in the future,” Hardy told re searchers at CUC IV. But, Jackson said value-add ed grain production is not for every producer. “Many of the attributes desired by the cus tomers must be separated at the producer level. The produc er is the one person that can as sure the quality of the grain and provide storage to smooth out shipment patterns.” Jackson said quality specifi cations can require contract growing, specific harvesting and diying practices and iden tity-preserved storage. However, Jackson thinks the roles of seed breeders, grain handlers, com growers, and processors are changing as each one tries to move closer to the end user. “You will see more linkages form in various ways to share knowledge, minimize costs, and execute delivery of value added com to targeted high valued customers.” If It's Worth Your Investment Trust It To Hershey Com Talk, LtncwHr Farming, Saturday, January 25,19t7-P»qa GREG ROTH Penn State Assoc. Professor During the past year or so, I have received several reports of increasing interest in com as a grazing crop. The program consists of drilling or double planting com into an existing pasture or other seedbed at a population of about 40,000 plants per acre. The com is then strip grazed in mid July through August, ap proximately 60 days after planting, just before tasseling. Grazing com could help to supplement grazing during the summer slump in cool season pastures. For the first few days, cattle should be given limited access to the com so that their rumen can adapt to the new forage and so they can learn to eat it more efficiently. Forage quality of the com is reported to be higher than alter natives such as sorghum Sudan. Also, forage quality of com does not decline with maturity as sharply as it does with sor ghum sudan. Com also does not have the prussic acid con cerns associated with the sor ghums. Cost of establishment for this program may be higher than for sorghum Sudan. Seed costs could be as high as $4O/acre, depending on the seed you choose. One com pany, Baldridge Hybrids, who has promoted the grazing com RESEARCH UPDATE €®lN TPMJK MW§ concept, sells a seed com blend with some high protein lines specifically for this use. It would also be possible to use other hybrids. You could also use bin run or out-of-date seed com if you were willing to take a little risk to reduce costs and were willing to sacrifice quali ty a bit. Some N will also likely be needed, as it would be for sorghum sudan, depending on yield potential and previous crops. A herbicide may also be needed at least in some situa tions where early season com petition would be severe, as in a sod. We don’t have a lot of ex perience or data to make con crete recommendations on this practice. I have read a number of favorable testimonials on this practice from some other states. I do think it is an inter esting concept that might fit in some situations. This year we plan to have at least two on farm demonstrations, ono in Berks County and one in Tioga County. Feedback from these demonstrations should give us more insight into the feasibility of this practice here in Pennsyl vania. A 191
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