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The largest used equipment inventory in the Mid-Atlantic is only a click away. Visit our website by clicking here or visit us at one of our 11 locations throughout MD, DE, VA and PA.
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New combine could be available by summer
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The largest used equipment inventory in the Mid-Atlantic is only a click away. Visit our website by clicking here or visit us at one of our 11 locations throughout MD, DE, VA and PA.
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New combine could be available by summer
1.22.2008
By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor
RUTHSBURG, Md. — Talk about a basic combine.
It has a four-foot header, a diesel engine and no cab.
But it’s just fine with the University of Maryland’s Dr. Bill Kenworthy. It has the “bells and whistles” to do the job.
It’s a new research plot combine and, if everything falls into place, it could be purchased by the university this summer. It will join a small fleet of plot combines distributed across the state at the university’s various ag research centers for use on soybean and small grain plots.
Kenworthy unveiled the plans to buy the equipment at last Thursday’s 101st annual meeting of the Maryland Crop Improvement Association.
The effort to round up enough money to purchase the new combine, Kenworthy said, began when he was informed by Dr Cheng-i-Wei, dean of the University of Maryland ag college, that the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture, of which Kenworthy is chairman, was eligible, through a recent grant, for up to $100,000 in matching funds for the purchase of a major new piece of equipment.
“We thought it was time to upgrade our harvest equipment,” he said. A new plot combine, now out for bids, is expected to cost about $165,000.
Kenworthy is confident the purchase can be completed. He said he was extremely grateful to the Crop Improvement Association for its donation of $30,000. He has received other contributions from agribusiness firms and has some department funds as well.
The new combine will be garaged at the Wye Research Center and will be used to take some of the harvest load off a 1998 machine.
Kenworthy said the old combine “is still working fine and we will continue to use it.”
On the other hand, he added, “a new machine will increase our faculty’s ability to complete small grain and soybean harvest in a timely manner. We currently have multiple persons trying to compete for the use of one machine, and we are hoping that the additional equipment will help to reduce this conflict and give us greater flexibility in scheduling and using our resources.”