SVM-SS3_01142014

Cover story: Best Cob LLC uses ‘every bit’ of the corn cob to make useful products. – Page 4

Tuesday, January 14, 2014 A supplement to Sauk Valley Media

Jim Dunn/[email protected]

Ag technologyMilledgeville company assistshaying, conservation – Page 6

Biology boost Micronutrients help to grow

stronger plants – Page 8

Drones on the farmAgriculture a new market forunmanned aircraft – 0

typed in Cosmos extra bold

Today’s Farm January 14, 2014

The Illinois Milk Pro-ducers Association and the University of Illinois Extension will host the 2014 Dairy Summit at three locations around the state Jan. 21-23.

The regional Dairy Sum-mits will be held Jan. 21 at Highland Community College in Freeport; Jan. 22 at the Illinois Farm Bureau/IAA building in Bloomington; and Jan. 23 at Kaskaskia College in Centralia.

Registration for each

event will begin at 9:30 a.m. The event, which includes lunch and an exhibitors area, will end at each location at 2:55 p.m.

The program, which will feature production and policy updates from U of I dairy specialists, also will include a producer panel at each location in which milk producers and dairy specialists discuss ways to find the next 10 pounds of milk.

“I always pick up an idea or two from other dairymen that helps me on my operation,” said Doug Block, a dairy farm-er from Pearl City and member of the Midwest Dairy Association board. “That’s why I like these programs.”

Block will be a featured speaker on the producer panel at the Dairy Sum-mit in Freeport.

There is no single solu-tion or feed additive that will boost milk produc-tion by 10 pounds per cow, he noted. It takes a combination of feed and management adjust-ments.

“The big thing about finding the next 10 pounds of milk is doing all the things we know that are good to do and having the management ability to get them in place,” Block said.

For details and registra-tion information about the regional Dairy Sum-mits, visit www.illinois-milk.org or call 309-557-3703.

Today’s Farm celebrates agriculture in the Sauk Valley and beyond. It is published by Sauk Valley Media six times a year – in January, March, May, July, September and November.

We welcome story ideas about interesting local people who are involved with agriculture. Call Jim Dunn at 800-798-4085, ext. 511, or send an email to [email protected].



AG SEMINAR

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Today’s FarmSauk Valley Media

POLO

POLO – Steve Sheaffer, vice president of 1st Farm Credit Services in Polo, spent 21 days this past fall studying agriculture in Germany.

And what he found is that, while there are some differences across the Atlantic Ocean, farmers from the U.S. and Germa-ny have a lot in common.

“It was a great experi-ence,” Sheaffer said.

“We got to meet farm-ers, people in agribusi-ness, and people who help make policy.”

Many German farmers, much like their American counterparts, are striv-ing to boost production while minimizing inputs.

Sheaffer also reported

he saw increased produc-tion of corn in Germany compared to a previous trip he took to Europe in 2000. Corn silage and sugar beet production are used to fuel a growing biogas industry, he said.

But German farmers face increased pressure from some consum-ers, policymakers, and non-government orga-nizations to maintain old farming techniques, sometimes at the expense of new technology.

A ban on the use of sow gestation stalls was implemented in the EU at the start of 2013.

“A lot of European farm-ers have the same con-cerns we [in the U.S.] do,” Sheaffer said.

“Animal welfare is a big issue there. A lot of [Euro-pean] consumers want to see farming the way it was 50 years ago. That’s frus-trating to a lot of farmers because they understand

the economics.”Sheaffer believes public

sentiment in Europe is one of the top drivers of ag policy rather than eco-

nomics and productivity.A major push in the EU

is for smaller farms. Cur-rent policy calls for 5 per-cent of current farmland

to be taken out of pro-duction.

“The interesting part about European consum-ers is they want a lot of things,” Sheaffer said.

“They want non-GMOs, and they want more green areas. But it all comes at a high expense.”

The 21-day study tour in Germany was through the McCloy Fellowship program. Each year the American Council on Germany invites the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Ger-man Farmers Association to nominate four candi-dates for study tours to each country.

Sheaffer was the lone Illinois resident to take part in the McCloy pro-gram this year. The Ger-

man fellows visited the U.S. earlier in the fall and studied the ag industry in Illinois, New York, Flori-da and Arizona.

Sheaffer grew up on a farm, holds degrees in agribusiness and ag production from Illinois State University, and still helps his father and brother farm near Dixon and Polo.

Ag lender tours farms, facilities in EuropeGermans want to reduce inputs, increase yields

SubmittedSteve Sheaffer of Polo (second from left) poses near the Neuschwanstein castle in lower Bavaria during the McCloy Fellow study tour of Germany. Others on the tour were (left to right) Brandon Moore, Kelly Young and Trudy Wastweet.

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COVER STORY | BEST COB LLC

ROCK FALLS – There’s more to corn, well, than corn.

In both the field corn and sweet corn indus-tries, the whole ear is harvested. The kernel is kept, while the cob is dis-carded.

Years ago, farmers

picked the ears whole in the fall, then put them in storage to dry, then shelled the corn from the cobs the next summer. Farmers would use the leftover corn cobs as feed for chickens, hogs, and cattle or as fuel in wood-burning stoves.

Nowadays, farmers use combines, which chop up the corn cobs and leave

them scattered in the field. But seed corn com-panies use corn pickers, which pick the ear whole; the kernels are removed, and the cob remains.

Best Cob LLC, based in Independence, Iowa, but with its corporate head-quarters in Rock Falls, buys discarded corn cobs and processes them into a number of all-natu-ral, biodegradable and renewable products, said Pat Ward, the company’s general manager.

There are four compo-nents of corn cobs, Ward said.

The chaff, or the soft, fuzzy outer layer of the cob, along with the pith, or the spongy center of the cob, are lightweight and absorbent.

The woody ring is the hard ring that surrounds the pith; it works well as a carrier and an abrasive. (It’s also what corn-cob pipes were made of.)

Best Cob separates the pith and the chaff, also

called beeswing, from the woody ring, Ward said.

The woody ring is ground down and sifted, through screens, into dif-ferent particle sizes.

The larger particles are used for animal bedding and in cat litter, Ward said.

The smaller particles are used as a carrier for medicine given to farm animals; the corn cob absorbs the medicine and then can be mixed with feed to administer medicine to chickens, pigs and cows, he said.

There’s much more to corn than its kernelsCompany processes corn cobsinto a number of useful products

COB CONTINUED ON 5�

SubmittedLEFT: Best Cob’s manufacturing facility is in Independence, Iowa. All storage and manufacturing are under roof. The corporate headquarters is near Rock Falls.RIGHT: Best Cob’s premium horse bedding is packaged on site and shipped to distributors throughout the United States. This packaging line will produce more than 60 one-ton pallets of product in an 8-hour shift.

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The pith and the chaff are chopped up and pressed into pellets that are three times heavier than the original fluffy material, Ward said.

The dense pellets then are crumbled and used for animal bedding or ground down and used as absorbents for gasoline, oil and other chemical spills or on baseball dia-

monds, he said.The corn product essen-

tially solidifies the mess, or in the case of a wet ball field, the water, and makes it easier to clean up.

Best Cob also makes several commercial prod-ucts, such as abrasives for cleaning and polishing, Ward said.

Best Cob, founded in the late 1960s, is one of only a handful of corn cob processors in the country.

It prides itself on being environmentally friendly even before going green was trendy.

“For us to be profitable, we have to use every bit of the corn cob,” Ward said.

“If we have a [custom commercial] product that is off spec, we can just reprocess it and reuse it.

“If something falls out of the machine, we don’t throw it away; we reuse it.”

Company uses ‘every bit’ of cobCOB

CONTINUED FROM 4W

SubmittedTractors load raw corn cobs from storage into the grinding operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at Best Cob’s facility in Iowa.

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AGRIBUSINESS

MILLEDGEVILLE – Con-servation conscious, labor saving, and customer oriented are three phras-es that easily describe Dambman Service Inc.

Curt Dambman owns the company, which deals with high-tech equipment for the ag community and focuses on conservation till-age and hay equipment sales.

Round balers, sold by his company for hay work, have seen a big increase in sales and usage during recent years, Dambman said.

“The trend has definite-ly gone to round baling,” he said during an inter-view at the Northwest-ern Illinois Farm Show in Sterling in December.

“It’s much faster than square baling, and it’s definitely a big sav-ings where labor is con-cerned.”

Round bales, which can weigh anywhere between 1,600 and 2,000 pounds each, can be produced with one person oper-ating the equipment and moving the bales

to a desired location, as opposed to slower oper-ating times and the use of several workers involved in making smaller rectan-gular bales.

Soil tillage is also an area that sees frequent changes in trends, he said

“Conservation tillage in the fields has been a big thing for some time now,” he said, “but it kind of took a back seat when corn prices were $7 a bushel.

“When grain prices started spiking, guys did whatever they could – plowing and disking – to get a couple of more bushels to the acre.

“Grain prices are going back down now, and the market is beginning to balance out like it’s sup-posed to, so we’re seeing more soil conservation techniques being used again.”

Another trend becom-ing more noticeable in recent years is the plant-ing of cover crops as a conservation technique. Dambman sells equip-ment to help with that as well.

“The purpose of a cover crop is that it gives us more conservation con-trol over soil and nutri-ents,” Dambman said.

Technology assists haying, conservationFor three decades, Dambman Service has helped farmers

DAMBMAN CONTINUED ON 7�

Dave Fox/Special to Today’s FarmCurt Dambman of Dambman Service explains the functions and benefits of a Valmar 1655 metered air seeder.

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“It deals a lot with water quality in the fields and keeping things closer to the top.

“It helps us control unwanted movement of nutrients under the g r o u n d b y k e e p i n g nitrogen and other such things up closer to the surface. This results in less expense for nutri-ents in the spring, and it’s easier on the soil as well.

The whole process is a “big circle,” Dambman said.

“Controlling movement of water and nutrients wasn’t thought of much until recent years, but people have learned that by spending a little bit of money here for this, hopefully they’ll be sav-ing a whole lot later on in the nutrient end of the crop cycle.”

Dambman sells air seeder equipment, which

comes in handy not only with cover crop plant-ing, but with regular crop production as well.

An air seeder “is basi-cally a large hopper with meters on it, and it enables us to basically blow the seed across the width of the machine for planting,” he said.

Used primarily for smaller seeds like soy-beans, it can also be used for fertilizer and chemical applications, he said. The metering enables a more precise and accurate applica-tion.

This can enable a high-er yield at harvest, and also has the potential to greatly reduce expenses by lowering seed and chemical costs for the farmer.

“The biggest thing with metered air seeding is the efficiency, because it allows us to be more exact in the depth of the seeding as well as space between seeds and between rows,” he said.

Dambman enjoys what he does and especially the people he gets to work with. He attributes that enjoyment to being in business almost 30 years in the same loca-tion.

“Keeping up with tech-nology is important to me, but probably the most enjoyable part of it all is getting to work with farmers – being able to make the farmer’s life a little easier.”

Air seeder also good for fertilizerDAMBMAN

CONTINUED FROM 6W

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BIOLOGY OF FARMING

ERIE – Natural farm-ing with micronutrients is gaining popularity as a safe way to help soil and plants do what they’re supposed to do, and with better results.

Doug Miller, vice presi-dent of Erie-based Mid-west Bio-tech, spoke on the benefits of using enzymes and other bio-logical products in agri-culture at the annual Northwestern Illinois Farm Show in December.

“Farmers have gotten more in tune with micro-nutrients the past few years,” Miller said.

“They’ve always test-ed the soil for nitrogen, phosphorous, and so

forth, but there’s getting to be more of an aware-ness now of manganese, enzymes, and other micronutrients that are really needed to produce stronger plants and bet-ter yields.”

Founded in 1981, Mid-west Bio-tech is operated by Miller and his father, James, who serves as president and owner.

The elder Miller heard of a company in Salt Lake City in 1978, Chandler Crop Products, which planned to register new lines of biological prod-ucts for both crop and livestock use.

Samples of the products were bought and used in extensive testing on the family’s farm over the next several years, and were shown to increase yields considerably as the enzymes conditioned the soil.

Continued use of the products created less of a need for fertilizer and other standard soil nutri-

ents, while yields per acre continued to increase.

Sold on how easy the products were to use, and impressed with the results after continued use in the field, the elder Miller decided to became a distributor, forming his own company in Erie known as Midwest Bio-tech Inc.

“With this, we market biological products, main-ly enzymes, for agricultur-al use,” Doug Miller said.

“A lot of what we use works along similar lines to yogurt and human-consumption-based pro-biotics and how they work in the human body. These products do pretty much the same thing on an agri-cultural level.”

One of the more popu-lar products available is a seed treatment, made up of enzymes that multiply the microbes in the soil, which improves seed ger-mination and makes a big difference in root devel-opment, Miller said.

“With the seed treat-ment, we get faster growth, and much deep-er, better-developed root systems, which leads to higher yields and less problems during tough droughts or other hot weather problems.”

There are other advan-tages. “More of this stuff in the soil ensures the plant itself has more sugar content, and this tends to make the plant more resistant to insects and diseases as well.”

Micronutrients help to grow stronger plantsErie company sells enzyme products to boost yields

BIO-TECH CONTINUED ON 9�

Dave Fox/Special to Today’s Farm

Doug Miller stands at the booth of Erie-based Midwest Bio-tech during last month’s Northwest-ern Illinois Farm Show. Miller, vice president of Midwest Bio-tech, pro-moted the benefits of using enzymes and other biological products in agriculture.

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Yield increases can be surprising, and they more than make up for the cost of using the probiotic applications, Miller said.

“On average, we see about a 6-bushel-per-acre increase in corn, and about a 4-bushel-per-acre increase in beans.

“We have actual ly seen as much as a 40-

to 50-bushel-per-acre increase in yields in corn in dry areas or drought

regions, once the root systems become fully developed.”

Miller said Midwest Bio-tech’s products are cost-effective.

“Obviously, for a small expenditure, you can see a very large increase in profits at harvest time,” he said.

In addition to the seed treatment, the company sells another treatment enzyme that produces more microbes in the soil.

Probiotics helpful in a droughtBIO-TECH

CONTINUED FROM 8W

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TECHNOLOGY

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Idaho farmer Robert Blair isn’t waiting around for federal aviation offi-cials to work out rules for drones. He and a friend built their own, outfitting it with cameras and using it to monitor his 1,500 acres.

Under 10 pounds and 5 feet long, nose to tail, the aircraft is the size of a turkey, and Blair uses it to get a bird’s-eye view of his cows and fields of wheat, peas, barley and alfalfa.

“It’s a great tool to col-lect information to make

better decisions, and we’re just scratching the surface of what it can do for farmers,” said Blair, who lives in Kendrick, Idaho, roughly 275 miles north of Boise.

While Americans are abuzz about Amazon’s plans to use self-guid-ed drones to deliver packages, most future unmanned aircraft may operate far from the nation’s large population centers.

Experts point to agri-culture as the most p r o m i s i n g c o m m e r -cial market for drones because the technology is a perfect fit for large-scale farms and vast rural areas where priva-cy and safety issues are less of a concern.

A l r e a d y , f a r m e r s , researchers, and com-panies are developing unmanned aircraft sys-tems equipped with cam-eras and other sensors to survey crops, monitor for disease, or precision-spray pesticides and fer-tilizers.

Drones, also known as UAVs, are already used overseas in agriculture, including Japan and Bra-zil.

And the possibilities are endless: Flying gizmos could be used to ward off birds from fields, pol-linate trees, do snow surveys to forecast water supply, monitor irriga-tion, or plant and harvest crops.

Agriculture a promising market for dronesUses galorefor unmanned aircraft systems

DRONES CONTINUED ON 11�

APIn a May 2013 photo provided by Rhonda Blair, farmer Robert Blair stands in front of his tractor holding an unmanned aircraft that he built in Kendrick, Idaho. Blair uses the homemade drone, equipped with up to four cameras, to “scout” his 1,500 acres of wheat, peas, barley, alfalfa, and cow pasture.

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The technology could revolutionize agriculture, farmers say, by boosting crop health, improving field management prac-tices, reducing costs, and increasing yields.

So far, drones have been used mainly by the mili-tary. Interest is booming in finding other uses for them, but the possibili-ties are limited because of regulations on the use of airspace and privacy con-cerns.

The Federal Aviation Administration does not allow drones’ commer-cial use. Businesses and researchers can apply only for a special, experimental airworthiness certificate for research and develop-ment, flight demonstra-

tions, or crew training.The FAA does allow

public agencies – includ-ing law enforcement and other governmental agencies – to get a cer-tificate of authorization to operate unmanned aircraft in civil airspace. About a dozen sheriff’s offices, police and fire departments, as well as U.S. Customs and Bor-der Protection, have been allowed to use drones.

The move has raised concerns about privacy and government surveil-lance, leading to drone privacy bills being intro-duced in most states this year and about a dozen states passing laws, most to limit drone surveil-lance by law enforce-ment.

Those concerns, in turn, have tempered interest in developing unmanned

aircraft technology for police and other crime-fighting agencies – lead-ing drone manufacturers and researchers to focus on agriculture instead, said Josh Brungardt, director of unmanned systems at PARADIGM, a Bend, Ore.-based drone research company.

“A small UAV flying over a field with nothing around it doesn’t create a privacy issue,” he said. “We’re talking about an operating atmosphere that’s much more benign.”

Last year, Congress directed the FAA to grant unmanned aircraft access to U.S. skies by Septem-ber 2015. The agency is in the midst of developing operational guidelines for drone use, but it said the process would take longer than Congress expected.

Limited issues with privacyDRONES

CONTINUED FROM 10W

United Way of Whiteside CountyP.O. Box 806 Sterling, IL 61081-0806 (815) 625-7973 www.uwwhiteside.org

United Way of Whiteside County is reaching out to the farmingcommunity to participate in the annual fund raising campaign.

By working with local elevators all across the county, United Wayis providing an easy way for farmers to support the campaign by

simply designating a small amount of grain as a donationwhenever they deliver it to local elevators.

United Way of Whiteside County is a local, independent organizationwhich works to support 19 local nonprofit agencies and programs

providing health and human services to our friends, neighbors, co-workersand relatives. 99 percent of everything raised in Whiteside County stays

in Whiteside County. Just one percent of what is collected is paid toUnited Way Worldwide in order to use the logo and take advantage

of training opportunities at no cost.

Together, we get results no one could accomplish alone.That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED.

LIVE UNITED

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SVM-SS3_01142014

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