B 111 H Hb ,.
I 818 PENNSYLVANIA MASTER CORN GROWERS ASSOC , INC.
■ rn Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 3, 2001
A bumper corn crop resulted in a huge pile of corn at Risser Grain. Family
members, from left, are Debbie, Brent, Mark, and Ann with dog, Wiley.
Photo by Andy Andrews, editor
Crop Winners Announced At Keystone Farm Show
ANDY ANDREWS
Editor
YORK (York Co.)
Winners of the Pennsylvania
Five-Acre Corn Club Contest
were announced here at the
York Fairgrounds in mid-
January during the annual
Keystone Farm Show.
Dan Wolf, president of the
Pennsylvania Master Corn
Growers Association
(PMCGA), noted that of the
103 entries in the corn con-
Pa. and Del. No-Till Confer
ence, West Middlesex, Pa.
Also March 7, Hotel
Magee, Bloomsburg;
March 8, Carlisle, Pa.; and
March 9, Dover, Del.
Mid-Atlantic No-Till Confer
ence, Bloomsburg’s Hotel
Magee.
test, there were some “nota
ble differences,” he said, in
cultural practices compared
to the 1999 contest. Only 7 of
91 growers used cultivation,
with most growers using 30-
inch row spacing. The second
highest spacing was 38 inches
apart.
Wolf noted it is “hard to
find significant differences in
yield to favor one type of til
lage over another,” he told
those attending the awards
RN TALK
arm Calendar
Capitol Region Row Crop
Herbicide and Insecticide
Update, extension office,
Adams County, 1 p.m.-3
p.m.
Mid-Atlantic Tillage Confer
ence, Penn-Del Conference
Center, Carlisle, contact
Mark Goodson, (717) 840-
7408.
(Turn to Page 4)
presentation at
-grounds.
About 44 percent of the
contestants use sidedress ni
trogen. Average planting
depth was 1.7 inches. Corn
Corn contest winners announced at Keystone included, from left, Susan
Johnson, herdsperson, accepting for Nelson Beam, Elverson, second place,
shelled grain class, nonirrigated no-till; Jim Hershey, Elizabethtown, first place,
shelled grain class, nonirrigated no-till; Bob Shearer, Mount Joy, third place,
shelled grain class, nonirrigated tilled; and David B. Bivens, Big Cove Tannery,
third place, ear com class. Photo by Andy Andrews, editor
Forward Pricing Critical
To Corn Growers’
Economic Survival
HOLTWOOD (Lancaster
Co.) “You can no longer
put corn in a bin and wait on
prices,” said Ann Risser,
Risser Grain.
Risser, who with her
family are celebrating 25
years in the grain elevator
business, are trying to spread
the word about the realities of
grain buying and selling.
Farmers need to “have a
marketing plan,” Risser said,
including simple forward
pricing.
Ann; with husband Mark
and son Brent and Brent’s
wife, Debbie, operate a grain
business with three locations,
serving about 2,500 custom
ers.
With headquarters in Holt-
fair-
the
acres grown by participants
numbered 24,242.
For the most part, the year
was substantially different in
terms of total yield, a vast im
provement from the state
ANDY ANDREWS
Editor
wood, the grain business
picks up and delivers grain to
areas in Lancaster, York, and
other southeast Pennsylvania
counties, all of Maryland,
and into New York.
At Holtwood, all 150 till
able acres are rented.
Late last year, the location
housed two piles of grain
overflow. Both covered, one
pile included 200,000 bushels
or 11 million pounds of corn.
Another, when it was piled,
included about 50,000 bush
els. The corn is on top of a
120-foot square concrete pad
and covered by a heavy plas
tic bunker cover.
Storage at the Holtwood
location, noted Brent Risser,
is more than 550,000 bushels.
They can store 250,000 bush
(Turn to Page 5)
wide drought of the previous
summer. “Some don’t appre
ciate how good of a year it
was,” Wolf said
Greg Roth,
Penn State
(Turn to Page 3)