Nanton Farmer Visits John Deere Factory

Jan 11, 2019

Farmers who bleed green are going to be jealous of a Nanton area farmer who made the trip of a life time down South.

This week, farmer and speaker, Chris Koch, travelled to the Des Moines, Iowa John Deere factory located in the suburb of De Moine called Ankeny.

Koch spoke to John Deere marketing staff and factory workers, which he says was a bucket list presentation he can now check-off.

The factory makes cotton pickers, tillage equipment and sprayers, and Koch was able to take the Gold Key Tour of the facility.

"Farming and working with Mike Sears and Mesabi Ranches and spending a lot of time on a sprayer, it was pretty cool to see the sprayers going down the assembly line." Koch says. "I've also driven a cotton picker down in North Carolina before and those machines are absolutely massive! So it was pretty cool to see those getting put together."

Koch says what stuck out the most on the factory tour was the pride of the employees.

"When they have Gold Key Tours through, they take a minute to say hello and thank the John Deere customers for all they do. The customers also love seeing the people that put together the machinery."

Overall, Koch says it was a very exciting experience as both a farmer and a speaker.

Source : Discoverairdrie

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.