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Specialists in Wildflowers Since 1965

Hundreds of Species

Regional, Special Use & Custom Mixtures ApplewNative oGrasso es d

Wildflower Seeds

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Phone: 303.431.7333
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5380 Vivian Street Arvada, CO 80002 USA www.applewoodseed.com

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it makes you recognize there’s more to it than just the science part. I just find that fascinating.

Future of Forage

Tom Strachota: Further down the road I see the role of technology playing a greater role, having a greater impact in the alfalfa industry. For example: hybrid alfalfa. We announced a hybrid alfalfa six years ago. Today, hybrid alfalfa constitutes 58% of our sales because it works. We’ll also see shifting of corn varieties towards silage specific purposes, so for example we’ve got a product called Hi-DF, highly digestible forage/corn hybrids, those hybrids have specific attributes that, when fed to the dairy herd, will produce more milk per tonne, more milk per acre. So we’re drawing a dichotomy between our grain hybrids and our forage hybrids.

Gm Vegetable Prospect

Ko Remijnse: I think it will certainly take some more time before GMOs will be introduced on a large scale in vegetables. Vegetables are a bit different I think than most field crops. In field crops, if the consumer is eating GMOs it is in general only a percentage of what they eat, but in a vegetable if you eat a watermelon GMO, the whole watermelon is GMO, the whole tomato is GMO. It is zero or 100% and a lot of consumers are still afraid.

microbes

Dean Oestreich: DuPont is really unique on the energy side. We can influence ethanol production through our seed and crop protection businesses. We are working on next generation biofuels, biobutanol, which will enhance our capabilities to use biomaterials. We are also working on cellulosics in terms of making the microbes, the bugs, genetically modified so we can improve the process, so we’re connected through that value chain.

mail order challenges

Stephanie Turner: With mail order gardening you need to convey the value of your product. Why is it worth ordering in advance and what’s so special about this product that I can’t just wait and pick it up somewhere in the spring when I feel like it? Convey the value, what’s special, why is it worth what it’s worth.

Know Your crop

Craig Lindholm: If you look at the value of seed treatments, a lot of the value comes from the planting rates of the crops. When you look at cereal seeding rates, depending on which part of the country you’re in, they will go from 30-120 pounds per acre. Figuring an average of 60-70 pounds per acre, we can capture $1-2 per acre with cereals, and with corn it’s less than 50 cents per acre.

being dynamic

Ron Wulfkuhle: The seed industry is a very dynamic marketplace. There are new companies starting, there are longtime companies going away for a variety of reasons, and to be able to adapt to this change it’s actually fairly easy as a new business because we’re still developing, we’re still evolving and building the foundation of how we’re going to approach the business and how we’ll continue to meet the customers needs.

Seed WorLd