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.