07/03/07 New AgriPro Business Manager on PNW commitment

Farm and Ranch July 3, 2007 Ed Driskill has rotated out of potatoes and into wheat as the new business manager for AgriPro's Pacific Northwest Region. At a recent field day Driskill was one of several of the wheat breeding company's officials to emphasize the firms commitment to the PNW wheat industry. Driskill: "We want to be here for the long haul. And to do that we need to have good varieties and not just good yielders but definitely good quality. We want to make a firm stand out here and we are committed to do that. And yield and quality I think are the two best things that will do that for us." Agripro has released two varieties for the region, Paladin a hard red winter wheat and Palomino a hard white winter wheat. Driskill: "And then we are two more that will be available this year, Salute and AP700 CL, which is a Clearfield wheat, so there is new material coming on the line and as you will see in the nursery here today there is a lot of new stuff in the pipeline so we are coming with new varieties. The thing is we don't want to come too fast because just throw a bunch of varieties out there that haven't thoroughly tested, we want varieties that are going to be here and make an impact." Driskill says AgriPro has a good relationship with the land grant universities in the region pointing to John Burns who runs WSU's variety testing program and the fact OSU wheat breeder Jim Peterson has allowed the company to use some of his genetic material. Though he has only been here a short time Driskill says everyone he's met from seedsmen, fieldmen to chemical people are great to work with and all are working for the farmer. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.