By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

RICHMOND, Ind. — Visitors from New Zealand recently toured Harvest Land Co-op’s Ag Center location; Dow AgroSciences LLC hosted the businessmen to visit the Indiana facilities.

Harvest Land’s Hagerstown location had plenty to show – the grain operation, nutrient storage, liquid terminal and fleet equipment. Because Dow and Land O’Lakes feel Harvest Land has state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, they decided to bring the New Zealand farmers here so they could see how retailers in the United States do business with growers, said Sam Saggetti, business manager for Land O’Lakes (Harvest Land is one of Land O’Lakes’ top member cooperatives).

The tour of the Hagerstown facility generated conversation on the wet Indiana spring season and the methods farmers are using to battle high moisture in the fields. In New Zealand all crops and forages must be non-genetically modified, so different ways of ensuring an abundant crop in such weather conditions were shared, Saggetti said.

“We looked at application equipment, how we apply fertilizers and crop protection products, how we store fertilizer and grain, how we manufacture fertilizer at Harvest Land (and) talked  about how we store crop protection products and how we keep the environment safe,” he added.

“In the event there was a spill, (we also discussed) how we keep the product on the property, contain it and clean it up and keep it from getting into the water.”

In conversation the group compared the different weeds found in the U.S. versus the weeds in their crops in New Zealand. There were similarities, but one interesting thing noted was that in the U.S. everyone tries to eliminate plantain, whereas in New Zealand farmers cultivate it for use as a feedstock.
“We all thought that was kind of ironic,” Saggetti said.

The New Zealand farmers were most fascinated with Harvest Land’s self-propelled sprayer, which has a 90-foot boom, he said. The fields in New Zealand are much smaller, so their application equipment isn’t as large.
“We’re heavily into corn and soybeans and wheat in our part of the country, and they’re into horticulture, vegetables, fruit crops like kiwi and those kinds of things,” he said.

“New Zealand is also known for their sheep production. That’s all due to environment. It was interesting to compare and contrast that.”