Elmer’s introduces new grain cart

Oct 19, 2021

The Haulmaster 2300 is available for order now

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

An ag equipment manufacturer has brought a new product to market.

Elmer’s Manufacturing recently introduced the Haulmaster 2300 grain cart, the largest grain cart the company offers.

With its 2300-bushel capacity, the new grain cart achieves an additional 13 per cent carrying volume per load compared to the Haulmaster 2000.

This product came from spending time with farmers and listening to what they were asking for, said Ben Johnson, sales coordinator with Elmer’s.

“We spent a lot of time in the buddy seat with customers and something that was indicated to us is farmers wanted almost an extra combine dump to be able to fill those semis before they send them back into the yard,” Johnson told Farms.com.

The new grain cart is also built standard on Elmer’s High Capacity undercarriage to properly support the increased grain volume.

Aside from the increased carrying capacity, the Haulmaster 2300 comes standard with many features customers expect from Elmer’s.

This includes the direct-drive Powermaster gear box, which is unique to Elmer’s products, Johnson said.

“It eliminates any drive belts that a lot of our competitors would have,” he said. “It also allows us to bring the overall height of the cart down.”

The Haulmaster 2300 also comes with a fully bolt together design which helps with the cart’s performance.

“It reduces weld distortion and if you ever needed to replace a panel you could do that simply,” Johnson said.

The grain cart also comes in five colours and can be purchased with left- or right-hand auger discharge.

Farmers wanting to see the grain carts in person for the first time can do so next month.

The first public showing of the Haulmaster 2300 will take place at the Agri-Trade Equipment Expo in Red Deer, Alta., from Nov. 10 to 12.

Producers who submit orders for the grain cart between now and Nov. 30 can expect it to be delivered in summer 2022.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”