Nine Farm Equipment magazine staff reporters attended the Farm Progress Show of 2012 in Boone, Iowa, August 28-30th. Here is just a sampling of what they learned.
"The size of corn heads today is scary," says Marion Calmer, CEO of Calmer Corn Heads. "But these guys are packing enough money and acres that it just doesn't bother them to order a corn head that's $200,000, run it for 3 years and then turn around and buy another one."
Calmer Corn Heads founder Marion Calmer had not one, but two, sets of "dark days" before making the decision to hang out his own shingle. On two occasions, he had contracts inked with major-lines, expecting to see his single-chain corn head mass-produced by the majors.
Had America's horses been a little less girth, the movement toward narrower-row corn might not have seen the uphill battle it has. "The 44-inch paradigm was there forever, and it's because 44 inches was the width of the Belgian horse," says Marion Calmer, CEO Calmer Corn Heads. "It came down to 40 inches around the Great Depression, but was still stuck at 40 inches throughout the 1960s."
Frustrated by seeing his invention bastardized at two major-lines, corn grower/researcher Marion Calmer set out to start his own specialty equipment business -- one in which every customer is given his cell phone during harvest and invited to call him.
In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, we take a look at CNH Industrial’s goals for growing its precision business by 2030.
Built on 90 years of expertise, Yetter Farm Equipment leads the agriculture industry in designing effective and innovative equipment for residue management, seedbed preparation, precision fertilizer placement, harvest attachments, strip-tillage, and more.
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