Farm Progress Show 2011_1

I attended the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, IL yesterday with my son Nathan.  Anyone in agriculture who has never been a part of this spectacle should try to attend at least once.  Yes it is crowded.  Yes it can he hot.  But to see all the suppliers and dealers in one place is quite an opportunity.  If you are shopping for a particular piece of equipment this is the place to get all your questions answered in one place and compare equipment and prices. 

So what did we see that is "new".  Machinery continues to get bigger.  A number of Tweeps gathered at the John Deere area for a tweetup.  As a "reward" for showing we were given a briefing on the newly unveiled combine.  The representatives said it is possible to harvest 320 acres of high yielding corn in about 10 hours.  How many farmers need this capacity?  The cool thing is that about a dozen of us on twitter got to meet in person. 

One of the highlights for me is always the varied industry tent.  This tent contains innovators, small companies, and maybe a "snake oil" salesman or 2.  Dan Towery, a blogger I link to was there representing the Oregon Annual Ryegrass organization.  It is always fun to see old friends. 

I had a specific mission to find the perfect vertical tillage equipment.  With a large number of shortline manufacturers present, you would think that would be an easy mission.  We did find some good equipment, but nothing I would call perfect.  Vertical tillage will be another blog.

It is interesting to see companies that started off in the varied industries tent who have gotten bigger.  That seems to apply to a lot of the precision people.  AgLeader, Raven, and Trimble among others had their own tents.  Marion Calmer had an impressive display of his narrow row corn heads.  Calmer predicted that we will get down to 12 inch rows in order to grow 300 bushel corn.  Most of the corn heads we saw including Calmer's were equipped to crush the sturdy Bt stalks that we see in the modern world.

More tomorrow.