The grass-seed industry sees a couple challenges that don’t come with easy solutions. Each fall and winter we battle slugs and geese.

Slugs
Willamette Valley grass-seed farmers have battled the gray field and garden slug for years. The slug epidemic continues to grow, and the solutions are minimal. Slugs wipe out acres at a time with their appetites.

Kubota Tractor Corp. (KTC) says it will enter the U.S. hay market in 2014 with an all-new line of hay tools. The new machinery expands the company’s offerings in the agricultural market, and will allow its dealers to serve as a convenient destination for tractors, hay implements and spreaders.

The new implements will be produced by Kverneland Group (KG), an international company that develops, produces and distributes agriculture machinery.

Chris McCracken has been made director of sales over North America for Cover Crop Solutions LLC, a seed company focused on research, development, production and sales of high performance cover crop varieties and mixes. McCracken has worked in the seed industry since 1998 in distributor and dealer development as well as at the sales level.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) says that domestic policy advocacy efforts on behalf of the equipment manufacturing industry will now be integrated under the “I Make America” banner. As part of the integration the campaign has launched a new website.

World Ag Expo (WAE) is calling for video submissions to tell the story of agriculture and giving entrants a chance to win $3,000. The contest will focus on the group’s theme for 2014, "Feeding Tomorrow's World.”

Thanks to new research and a growing demand for biofuels, farmers may soon be able to use modified land to grow a new cash crop, switchgrass.

New Holland Agriculture & Construction has entered into an agreement with the Alliant Energy Center (AEC) in Madison, Wisconsin, to secure naming rights for a new livestock pavilion that will be built on the grounds beginning next year.

Construction of the New Holland Livestock Pavilion will begin in April 2014 with completion expected in September. When completed, the buildings will span more than 300,000 square feet and will be home to a variety of dairy and livestock animals housed during shows and expositions held on the AEC grounds.

A record number of aspiring and current agronomy professionals made a commitment to agronomy by taking their first step towards becoming a Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) in 2013. More than 2,200 individuals took the local board and international exams.

More than 22,300 students joined the National FFA Organization during the 2012-13 school year, according to the organization. FFA especially saw an explosion in membership throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the past year, with membership today standing at 579,678 students in grades 7-12. The number of new, local FFA chapters throughout the country has grown to 7,570.

Lallemand Animal Nutrition (LAN), in partnership with the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute, has developed the Forage Center of Excellence in Chazy, New York, representing a significant investment in forage fermentation and microbiology research.