THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 23, 1996 TAG: 9608230054
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 59 lines
C. Scott Stoddard saw more than he'd bargained for when he attended the Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center's 24th Annual Field Day on Thursday: a machine so big that it looked like it had come out of the fields of Jurassic Park.
He attended the event to see the peanut combine capable of working eight rows at once.
``I heard it was going to be out here, and I had to come,'' Stoddard said, shaking his head at the size of the machine that dwarfed him and everybody else around it.
Magnum Force, as it is called, is manufactured in Suffolk by Armadas Industries. The eight-row, self-propelled peanut combine was the newest innovation in agricultural machinery featured.
``It can eliminate four men and five other machines,'' Joe Prince, a farmer of 50 years who lives in Stony Creek, Va., said, chuckling. ``There's nothing wrong with it. You just need four or five policemen back and front when you move it down the road.''
Amadas and John Deere joined forces to develop what the company is advertising as the only one of its kind in the world. Manufacturing the machine at the Suffolk company has created work for 50 additional employees and required new manufacturing facilities.
Peanut growers last year successfully tested a similar machine that pulls the vines from the ground and separates the peanuts from the plants as it rolls through the fields. Magnum Force, at a price of $198,000, will be available in limited quantities over the next two years. The company anticipates manufacturing 25 this year and another 50 in 1997 on a custom contract basis.
``The reception has been very good,'' said Ted Williams, a company representative. ``Last year, we only had prototypes in the fields. We heard a lot back from the first farmers who tried it, and we listened.''
The huge combine, displayed with everything else that's new in the farm equipment line on the front lawn of the research center, represents what's new in the farming industry, Williams said.
But changes in the industry showed up in the well-manicured fields surrounding the facility as well.
For about two years, scientists there have been experimenting with cornmeal to combat Sclerotinia blight - a fungus that is becoming a plague for farmers in this wet, unusually cool summer.
``I've been here 17 years, and this year is as bad as I've ever seen it,'' plant pathologist Patrick Phipps said. ``This is the second year we've looked at cornmeal. We've decided it might be of help in managing the disease.''
Researchers at the center are testing another chemical that shows promise of combating the blight that was first recognized in Virginia's peanut fields in 1971, Phipps said. But the combination of Bravo for leafspot control and Fluazinam for the blight hasn't been approved yet, and it could be another two years before approval comes through. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II, The Virginian-Pilot
The Tidewater Agricultural Center in Suffolk displays the Magnum
Force peanut Harvester built by Amadas Inc. during Field Day on
Thursday. The giant combine can work eight rows at once. by CNB