Click Play To Listen: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Homegrown Indiana innovation for farmers was displayed Tuesday in Fulton County when the New Holland Rochester manager climbed aboard a combine with his patented Cornrower and created a windrow of corn stover while shelling corn. The Cornrower attaches to a 99C chopping corn head.
Jim Straeter developed and trademarked the Cornrower. “And what it does is it catches the material that comes down through the stalk rolls, chops it up, blows it through a tunnel, and there’s one on each row,” he told HAT. “The tunnel exit is a conveyor that’s right behind the corn head. That would be ahead of the drive tires of the combine. The conveyor and the air velocity of the chopping device move the material underneath the feeder house so as the combine moves forward you have a windrow of chopped stover.”
Straeter says if you disable the chopper on the back of the combine, “the corn cobs, shucks and so forth that come out the back of the machine land on top of the stalks that were brought down through the rolls where the corn is, and you wind up with a very neat windrow of chopped stover without any raking, without any dirt, without any rocks, and without another trip through the field.”
Straeter’s goal is to get a marketing agreement with a manufacturer put in place so farmers can get a Cornrower. The market demand for corn stover is yet to be determined, but Straeter thinks there ultimately could be plenty of opportunity.
“I do believe that there is more to come in the way of corn stover use. I think gasification of corn stover, using in boilers as a coal replacement are all on down the road as the economies come together. Coal is pretty cheap right now and natural gas is pretty cheap right now, but with environmental regulations and so forth, things can change sometimes in a pretty big hurry.
Monsanto has been promoting the sustainable harvest of corn stover. In our second part of this story we’ll talk with one of their representatives, and the Indiana farmer who calls himself the Cornrower guinea pig.
Learn more about the Cornrower itself in the HAT interview with Straeter:
Click Play To Listen: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
