REAP tour swings through Mid-Atlantic

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor

They came from Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska,  and North and South Dakota.
Soybean farmers all, they snapped up an invitation from the American Soybean Association to get a look at — and in many cases to be introduced to — agriculture  in the Mid-Atlantic.
Along with representatives of the ASA and the United Soybean Board, they arrived last Tuesday at BWI to begin a three-day, four-state tour of the region’s  diverse agricultural operations, hosted by the Mid-Atlantic Soybean Association.
“This was an opportunity to showcase some of the fascinating locations I’ve visited as a reporter,” said tour guide Carol Kinsley, an editor at American Farm Publications. Kinsley recently retired from the position of executive director at MASA.
The tour was  conducted under the ASA’s Regional Exchange and Awareness Program (REAP). REAP tours have been offered since 1991, helping U.S. soybean producers to build the relationships necessary to maintain a strong and proactive voice on behalf of farm-related legislative priorities in Washington, D.C.
The 2010 “southern” program kicked off on Aug. 3 at the Comfort Inn BWI in Linthicum, Md., where guests and MASA representatives celebrated MASA’s 40th anniversary with dinner, a cake, and a toast with wine from Layton’s Chance, a new winery begun by MASA’s former ASA director Joe Layton and his son, William.
Aboard a 56-passenger bus, the tour stopped at Beltsville (Md) Agricultural Research Center on Wednesday before heading across the Chesapeake Bay to Schillinger Genetics and the University of Maryland Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown, Md., and a barbecue at the farm of Alan and Hans Schmidt in Sudlersville, Md.
In the succeeding days., the farmers were welcomed by their colleagues in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania before returning to Baltimore and the flight back to their home states.
At Schillinger Genetics, near Queenstown, the visitors learned about a  burgeoning soybean variety development firm with 70 percent of  its work devoted to non-GMO varieties.
Billy Rhodes, who directs the operations of the Maryland  Schillinger facility, told the western farmers that there are plants in the fields now that are producing soybeans “that look like soybeans but are allergin free.”
His team at Queenstown is also in a the breeding process to develop soybeans specifically for dog food  - they will not cause “gas” – and for poultry and  fish.
John Schillinger, founder of the company,  was to leave in a  week from company headquarters in Iowa. He is scheduled to talk with aquaculturalists in Norway about supplying soy feed for the nation’s huge aquaculture industry.
He was expected also on that trip to visit farm leaders in Pakistan, a nation badly in need of protein.