Farming, Saturday, August 5, 2000 02- Dairy Farm Tour Aug. 11 HONEY BROOK (Chester Co.) A dairy farm tour will be conducted on four farms in the area Friday, Aug. 11, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Learn how the dairy farms cut their feed bill while they in crease their milk. Following is the farm tour schedule: • 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m. Mervin Stoitzfus, 3677 Horseshoe Pike, Honey Brook. Featured will be pasture mats, TMR, tunnel ven tilation, and other techniques to create a Pa. RHA of 23.498 M, 872 F, and 735 P. This farm had a 1,317 RHA increase last year. • 10:30 a.m.-noon. Jonas Stoitzfus, 355 White School Rd., Honey Brook. Tour highlights include a high-volume water system, tunnel ventilation, and pasture mats. This farm, with a 4,000 RHA increase, has records of 23,300 M, 803 F, and 708 P. Gleaner Returns To Kansas Roots ATLANTA, Ga. Agco Cor poration (NYSE: AG), a major worldwide manufacturer and distributor of agricultural equip ment, announced that manufac turing of its Gleaner combines will be returning to Kansas, to within just a few miles of where three brothers from Nickerson introduced the first self propelled Gleaner combine. Through all those years of his tory and evolution, the familiar silver color and Gleaner name have stood for harvest innova tion and engineering excellence. Now that storied history has come full circle, with the an nouncement that Gleaner man ufacturing will be located in Hesston, Kan. Gleaner traces its roots to 1923 when Curtis, George, and Ernest Baldwin, all brothers, introduced the com bine. “We’re moving our combine manufacturing line to our Agco facility,” said Tom Draper, gen eral marketing manager, Gleaner combines. “The move enables Agco to take advantage of a more modern manufactur ing plant and to centralize many engineering and production functions at one location.” The facility has served as the Homer Stamm, left, of Rovendale Ag and Barn Equip ment, Watsontown, was presented with the Silver MVP Award and Farmstead Equipment Top Sales Leader Award by John Ryan, general sales manager, J-Star Ag Division at a recent banquet. ■f yr : Business * News > V • Noon-2 p.m. Mark Stoltzfus, 413 September Rd., Honey Brook. Featured are a 60- foot waterer, excellent heifer fa cilities, tunnel ventilation, and a new Rissler TMR mixer. Lunch is served on this farm, which has an RHA of 23.377 M, 879 F, and 757 P. • 2 pm.-3 p.m. Tom and Joy Crothers, 301 Whiteside Dr., Oxford. The tour includes a milking parlor, freestall bam, simple rations, and a high producing Brown Swiss and Holstein herd. The farm had an approximately 5,000 RHA in crease with an RHA of 25,800 M. The tour is sponsored by NuTeam and is co-ponsored by Soy Plus, Triple M Farms, C.E. Sauders and Sons Mill, Mount Joy Dairy Co-Op, Deer Creek John Deere, Fisher & Thomp son, Lapp Bam Equipment, and Annlick Farm Supply. manufacturing center for the Hesston hay equipment line. Gleaner combine production is being moved from an Agco oper ation in Independence, Mo. The Kansas facility and its employees have been honored many times for product innova tion and engineering excellence. “This move exemplifies our commitment to maintain and even strengthen our role as a leader in providing combines for producers in North America,” Draper said. “The Kansas facil ity will enable us to continue the tradition of quality that’s syno nymous with the Gleaner name. And it will better position our engineering, design, manufac turing, and marketing team to be even more responsive to our customers’ changing needs.” That’s especially important as harvesting technology moves to sophisticated guidance and yield monitoring systems. All Gleaners come equipped to accept Agco’s advanced Field star yield monitoring system, which uses global positioning sa tellites to relate yield informa tion to field position. Fieldstar mapping software is then used to process accurate field maps, which helps analyze crop and yield data. ,x s 7 •J ** H* *• - * *.i ' * v Vi USDA Scientists Rapidly Expand Gene Segments Database CLAY CENTER, Neb. Progress by a team of Agricul tural Research Service scientists shows that biotechnology’s best shot at improving livestock may be to help conventional breeders identify genetically superior ani mals. “This team of IS scientists is generating a vast amount of new genetic information that’s being shared with researchers around the world,” said Floyd P. Horn, administrator of ARS, the chief research agency of the USDA. The team is based at the Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (MARC) oper ated by ARS at Clay Center. The team’s findings are acces sible through the databases of the National Center for Biotech nology Information (NCBI) Genebank in Washington, D.C., and databases at the Clay Center facility. In the past year, the team has deciphered 50,000 gene sequences in the cattle genome, and more than 30,000 sequences in swine. Within the next three months, the scientists hope to add 30,000 additional sequences from cattle and 10,000 from swine. The numbers to date repre- Monsanto Guarantees Roundup Ready® System Will Boost Bottom Line ST. LOUIS, Mo. Research bicide over the top for proven beans in wide rows,” he said, shows the Roundup Ready® crop safety. “On a 1,000-acre farm, no-till system can boost a soybean can save as much as 4SO hours of grower’s bottom line. That’s J ke *b® w ® ec * con ' time and 3,500 gallons of diesel why Monsanto is offering the trol they get with Roundup over f ue l each year. That’s eleven 40- Bottom-Line Booster Guaran- to P °‘ Roundup Ready soy- hour weeks in time savings and tee.™ beans, but the economic benefits $4)0 oo less for diesel at $1.15 per ™ are displayed when farmers use CTn ii nn » The program encourages the whole system, including re- ® Oualifvine farmers must sitm growers to compare the duced tillage,” said Monsanto un S, v Oct 15 2000 indicating Roundup Ready soybean system mar ket manager Kurt Rahe. no! m reduced tillage to non- “With the Bottom-Line Booster till/conservation tillaee acres Roundup Ready soybeans with Guarantee farmers have everv tiu/conservation-tuiage acres conventional tillaee and herbi Guarantee, tanners have every- t hey will enroll in the Bottom vuiivcmiuiidi Ullage ana neroi- thing to win and nothing to lose T inp Rnnefpr m.arantee anH Read? r °sfsS' provide “ aki "B the swit ‘ h COn " er ' how many acrS of soybeans, equal or better net income than R e ady soybeans RoU “ dup both Roundup Ready and non the traditional system in the y soy Dean - Roundup Ready, they intend to comparison, Monsanto will pay plant in crop year 2001 corn each qualified grower up to pared to 2000. $lO,OOO. The Bottom-Line Booster Guarantee is now available in most of the Plains, Midwest, and eastern United States, except for certain counties in Missouri, Virginia, New Mexico, Okla homa, and Texas. For more de tails, complete eligibility requirements and program rules, contact your Monsanto representative or your agricul tural retailer, or call 800- ROUNDUP. The Roundup Ready soybean system has three major compo nents. • Replace tillage with a pre plant burndown using Roundup Ultra® or Roundup UltraMAX" herbicide. • Buy Roundup Ready soy bean seed from any authorized dealer. • Spray Roundup brand her- J-Star Honors Dealers FORT ATKINSON, Wis. J-Star has honored several deal ers with sales awards at a recent banquet in State College, Pa. Rovendale Ag and Barn Equipment, Watsontown, Pa., was presented with the Silver MVP Award and Farmstead Equipment Top Sales Leader Award. Clee McMillen and Clair McMillen of McMillen Brothers, Inc., Loysville, were presented with the Silver MVP Award and Farmstead Equipment Top Sales Leader Award. The MVP Award (major volume performer) recognizes the company’s top dealers who have achieved bronze, silver, gold, or platinum levels of sales and performance objectives during 1999. The Top Sales Leader Award recognizes the top sales leaders for J-Star’s main product lines. sent about 95 percent of the pub licly available information on DNA segments called expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for cattle and almost 90 percent for swine, according to Dan B. Laster, who retired as director of the Clay Center facility on June 30. Laster began assembling the Clay Center team in the early 19905. ESTs represent significant parts of genes that determine the proteins produced by certain tissues. “Most of an animal’s DNA never seems to do any thing,” said biochemist Timothy P. Smith, who leads the ARS team. So the scientists focus on two to five percent of the DNA that’s turned into RNAs ri bonucleic acids which are an intermediate step in making proteins. A similar but small effort is also being conducted by an ARS group in Beltsville, Md. That group is sequencing genes that function in the mammary gland of dairy cattle. The Maryland group is working to identify all of the genes responsible for milk productivity traits and the genes that cause superior animals to produce larger quantities of Research at Monsanto Cen ters of Excellence shows that, on average, no-till soybeans grown in narrow rows add $l6 per acre more to a grower’s bottom line than conventional soybeans grown in wide rows, noted Rahe. “Seeding soybeans in no-till, or in a conservation-tillage system with a spring bumdown program following limited fall tillage, saves time and money at planting, and yields are at least as good as conventional soy- Clee McMillen, left, and Clair McMillen, center, McMil ien Brothers, Inc., Loysville, were presented with the Silver MVP Award and Farmstead Equipment Top Sales Leader Award by John Ryan, general sales manger, J-Star Ag Division. milk proteins in their mammary glands. By using computers to compare gene sequences from different cows, the researchers will sort out the genes that con trol milk composition. The Clay Center and Beltsville group work together to deposit the in formation into the NCBI and Clay Center databases. According to Steven M. Kappes, a recent member of the MARC genomic team and now ARS National Program Leader for Animal Production and Germplasm, each of many genes may have a small impact on an inherited trait, but when added together they may have great economic importance for a herd and for the livestock industry. The accelerated pace of gene mapping stems partly from suc cesses by international scientists in the much larger Human Genome Project. Humans and livestock basically have the same genes, but with small dif ferences in sequences and ar rangement on chromosomes. Comparisons and contrasts be tween gene sequences of various species are helping biomedical researchers learn how proteins work and how the human body works, said Kappes.
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