Yearly Archives: 2007
Interview with Scott Sanford
Scott Sanford is a Senior Outreach Specialist in the UW-Madison Department of Biological Systems Engineering. This position is funded by Wisconsin’s Focus on Energy program and provides technical support to its agricultural program area. Scott has been in this position for five years. He worked…
Interview with Randy Van Haren
In 2003, Dr. Walt Stevenson and Dr. Zahi Atallah of the University of Wisconsin Department of Plant Pathology began work in the area of using molecular techniques to detect and quantify the level of various pathogens in potato tubers. They have successfully completed their detection…
Interview with Jeff Sommers
To say that current WPVGA President Jeff Sommers is a busy man would be a great understatement. In addition to running a 9,000+ acre potato and vegetable farm, Sommers is very active in the industry. The following are some of the organizations and committees on…
Interview with Dr. Rick Knowles
Wisconsin will be the host of the 2006 Potato Industry Outlook Summit and Seed Seminar to be held December 7-9 in Chicago. One of the highlights of this three-day potato industry powwow will be a presentation by Dr. Rick Knowles entitled: Optimizing tuber size distribution…
Interview with Benjamin Feinn
“Volm is a legacy company,” Benjamin Feinn said. “It is 56 years old, and we’ll continue to do the things this company is known for. I’m not here to dress it up. I’m here to help make sure it stays here for another 50 years.”…
Interview with Albert Wada
A founding group of fresh potato growers began a process in September of 2004 to develop a cooperative company, owned and controlled by its members. The non-profit cooperative, United Potato Growers, has the following mission statement: We bring order and stability to the potato industry…
Interview with Dr. John Bamberg
The potato is a remarkable food crop, but one that is susceptible to many pests, diseases, environmental stresses and quality problems. Fortunately, it has a great wealth of wild and cultivated relatives with genes that mitigate these problems, and are relatively easy to hybridize. The…
Interview with Rick Beggs
Rick Beggs of REB’L Acres, Plainfield, was elected to the WPVGA Board of Directors in February of 2006. Beggs grew up on his family’s dairy farm, and milked 40 cows of his own for one year, before deciding that wasn’t for him. He grew field…
Interview with Dr. Paul Bethke
April 5, 2006. This will long be remembered as one of the most important dates in the history of the Wisconsin Potato & Vegetable Growers Association. The event: The official groundbreaking of the WPVGA Storage Research Facility at the Hancock Agricultural Research Station. After several…
Interview with Jed Colquhoun
Resistance management has become a critical crop protection issue in the potato and vegetable industry. In the area of weed control, the intensive use, overuse or misuse of herbicides can select individual plants with complete or partial loss of product efficacy. This reduces the utility…
