Cotton Harvester Donation Does More than Pick Cotton

Feb 03, 2022

When is a piece of machinery more than just a piece of machinery? When it comes as a donation that brings together faculty and students across agencies and departments within Texas A&M AgriLife and Texas A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Hlavinka

A team from Hlavinka Equipment Co. trains Texas A&M University faculty and students on the Case-IH Module Express 625 Cotton Picker that was donated by the Hlavinka family. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

Steve Hague, Ph.D., was looking to purchase a newer cotton harvester for research plot work within the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences prior to the start of the 2021 cotton harvest season. When he asked for bids, one company and family offered more than just a bid.

Hlavinka Equipment Co. sent them a Case-IH Module Express 625 Cotton Picker. And then the Hlavinkas sent technical experts from Case IH to train about 40 people — research leaders, technicians, graduate students and undergraduate students — on the operation and maintenance of the cotton picker.

“Terry Hlavinka contacted me and said they would like to provide this gift,” Hague said. “They’ve been longtime supporters of not only the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, but our university.”

In fact, he said, the last commercial cotton harvester on the A&M farm was a 1992 Case IH 2055, which was also donated by the Hlavinka family.

Hlavinka blood runs deep at Texas A&M and in agriculture

The Hlavinka family is steeped in agriculture and Texas A&M tradition.

Terry Hlavinka ’85 is a former yell leader at Texas A&M; his brother, Kenneth ’90, a former Aggie Bonfire Redpot, and their father, Joe ’56, a former commanding officer in the Corps of Cadets. Joe is also a current member of the College of Agriculture Development Council.

Joe and his wife, Patty, were honored to be 1986 Parents of the Year and have seen all their five children graduate from Texas A&M – Michael ’83, Michelle ’84, Terry ’85, Sarah ’86 and Kenneth ’90.

The family legacy of Aggie Former Students runs even deeper in the Hlavinka family to include Joe’s three brothers, two brothers-in-law, countless nieces and nephews, and several grandchildren. All of the four children of Terry and his wife, Susan, have attended A&M and have studied agriculture. Patrick ’23 will be the last of these four to earn his diploma.

Jillian ’22, daughter of Kenneth and his wife, Bonnie, will follow her older brother and also earn an agricultural degree.

Collectively, family members have established the William J. Hlavinka ’50 Fellowship Endowment, a chair for Czech studies, and multiple Presidential Endowed Scholarships. They also have donated dozens of tractors and provided major gifts for multiple colleges and athletics at Texas A&M. Collectively and individually, Hlavinka family members have been instrumental in recruiting masses of young men and women from across the globe to attend Texas A&M.

Terry and Kenneth’s grandfather founded Hlavinka Equipment Company in 1939. Today, several third- and fourth-generation family members operate that business, led by Terry Hlavinka.

Kenneth Hlavinka manages Hlavinka Cattle Co., which markets cattle and produces rice, cotton, corn and soybeans on the brothers’ 25,000 acres spread across the coastal region.

Together, the two established Hlavinka Commodities Co., which operates bonded warehouses for commercial drying and storage of rice. They also branched into development, including energy, entertainment and hospitality. Their Typhoon Texas Waterparks are also under Aggie leadership, the Pyek Group, which now operates four parks in three of the top 25 markets in the U.S.

“It is not surprising that Aggie leadership and participation is a common incidence across the portfolio of businesses,” Terry said.

Improving and expanding research

Just as the Hlavinkas have expanded the Aggie service across many industries, Hague plans to expand the use of their gift to many others.

“We’re going to be able to leverage this piece of equipment immensely – it will allow all of us to expand our programs,” Hague said, adding the cotton picker will let them increase their research program from 40 acres of test plots to 60 acres this year.

“You need as many plots as you can get to improve the quality of your research,” he said. “This picker picks the crop completely clean and replicates what is going on in commercial fields.”

And it only takes a quarter of the time to get the harvest completed, Hague said.

“During Hurricane Harvey, we lost a lot of our research plots because they were destroyed before we could get them out of the field,” he said. “The newest cotton picker we were using was 40 years old, and we had another one that was over 50 years old. It almost qualified for Social Security.”

This year they will install some modifications to the new cotton picker and use it for plot harvesting. Hague estimates it will be used on about 200 acres of cotton each year.

Harvester is a teaching tool for many

Hague said the cotton picker won’t just be used in the research program; it will be used in all the field-based programs involving Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and Texas A&M AgriLife Research entomology and cotton projects, weed science, cotton physiology and soil fertility projects in the Bryan-College Station area.

“It helps not only multiple agencies but also multiple departments within the College,” he said. “It also will improve our teaching. We employ a lot of research and graduate students, and they need to understand modern equipment – how to operate it and maintain it.

“So, I see this as a valuable teaching tool as much as a research tool. We’ll be able to teach dozens of students how to use this equipment each year, so, over the years, it will impact hundreds of students.”

Also, Hague said, Bobby Hardin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Agriculture Engineering, is collaborating in the project to modify the machine for small plot harvesting by putting weigh scales on the picker. By involving his students, they learn how to create novel research equipment, which will also have a significant impact.

“This one machine has really brought together a lot of programs to help us all move forward in one direction,” he said.

Source : tamu.edu

Video: Moving Ag Research Forward Through Collaboration

BY: Ashley Robinson

It may seem that public and private researchers have different goals when it comes to agricultural research. However, their different strategies can work in tandem to drive agricultural research forward. Public research may focus more on high-risk and applied research with federal or outside funding, while private sector researchers focus more on research application.

“For me, the sweet spot for public private sector research is when we identify problems and collaborate and can use that diverse perspective to address the different aspects of the challenge. Public sector researchers can work on basic science high risk solutions as tools and technologies are developed. They then can work with their private sector partners who prototype solutions,” Mitch Tuinstra, professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University’s Department of Agronomy, said during the Jan. 10 episode of Seed Speaks.

Public researchers they have the flexibility to be more curiosity driven in their work and do discovery research. This is complimentary to private research, which focuses on delivering a product, explained Jed Christianson, canola product design lead for Bayer CropScience, explained during the episode.

“As a seed developer, we worry about things like new crop diseases emerging. Having strong public sector research where people can look into how a disease lifecycle cycle works, how widespread is it and what damage it causes really helps inform our product development strategies,” he added.

It’s not always easy though to develop these partnerships. For Christianson, it’s simple to call up a colleague at Bayer and start working on a research project. Working with someone outside of his company requires approvals from more people and potential contracts.

“Partnerships take time, and you always need to be careful when you're establishing those contracts. For discoveries made within the agreement, there need to be clear mechanisms for sharing credits and guidelines for anything brought into the research to be used in ways that both parties are comfortable with,” Christianson said.

Kamil Witek, group leader of 2Blades, a non-profit that works with public and private ag researchers, pointed out there can be limitations and challenges to these partnerships. While private researchers are driven by being able to make profits and stay ahead of competitors, public researchers may be focused on information sharing and making it accessible to all.

“The way we deal with this, we work in this unique dual market model. Where on one hand we work with business collaborators, with companies to deliver value to perform projects for them. And at the same time, we return the rights to our discoveries to the IP to use for the public good in developing countries,” Witek said during the episode.

At the end of the day, the focus for all researchers is to drive agricultural research forward through combining the knowledge, skills and specializations of the whole innovation chain, Witek added.

“If there's a win in it for me, and there's a win in it for my private sector colleagues in my case, because I'm on the public side, it’s very likely to succeed, because there's something in it for all of us and everyone's motivated to move forward,” Tuinstra said.