The folks at Kruger Seeds were very involved in the Technology Showcase tour stop in Elkhart, IA. Their Regional Business Manager, Tim Elliott, was there to make sure things ran smoothly. Tim manages a group of district sales managers. He started off the event with safety instructions and a review of the education stations out on the farm.
I kept seeing Kruger Seeds caps and banners with the slogan, “University Champions” emblazened on them, so when I got a chance to talk with Tim, the first question I asked him was what it meant. He says that it’s their tag line. “The reason we chose that is, we spend a lot of effort in making sure we test all our products with third party testing.” Tim says they work with all the Universities in their territory.
I asked him what he thought the mood of the growers attending the field event was and the word he chose was, “excitement.” One of the things that growers were able to see that would get them excited is how well the plants were doing in the field demonstration plots. This particular farm has seen some tough weather conditions that has included high winds and hail. You could see some of the effects of that but you could also see that the plants were standing well and looked to be coming along just fine in spite of those conditions. This impressed a few of the farmers I spoke with. On the subject of stress mitigation, Tim says that new biotechnology is “tightening up the yield trend line and moving it upward.” This means less yield volatility year to year.
The tour stop was very well attended and Tim encourages growers to go to these events every year since the technology is changing so rapidly. He says that Kruger Seeds requires its dealers to attend.
You can listen to my interview with Tim here: monsanto-tech-showcase-elliott.mp3