Salford Heads Home for 2015 Sunbelt Ag Expo

It’s late October, and that means it’s time for the Salford Group field team to head down to its southern home for one of the company’s favorite trade shows, the 38th running of the Sunbelt Ag Expo.

Billed as “North America’s Premier Farm Show,” the Sunbelt Ag Expo will run from October 20-22 at its traditional home at Spence Field in Moultrie, Georgia, about five hours south of the Salford BBI manufacturing facility in Cornelia, in the northern part of the state.  The 100-acre exhibit site, flanked by a 600-acre working research farm, hosts a hybrid indoor-outdoor show over three days that brings together over 1200 exhibitors and more than 100,000 attendees from across the southern United States each year.

Farmers attending the Sunbelt Ag Expo are regional and national leaders in production of crops such as peanuts, corn, cotton, soybeans, and turf.  In addition to the product exhibits and demonstrations from equipment areas like tillage and broadcast application, attending farmers enjoy multiple educational opportunities from agricultural schools at leading universities.

Leading the Salford Group team at Sunbelt Ag will be southeast region territory sales manager Brian Rawson. Supporting Rawson at the show will be his fellow sales managers Brian Hobson and Randy Copeland, as well as customer support manager Russ McEver. Lee Kilpatrick, US Sales Director for Salford Group, will also support the team in Moultrie.

Sunbelt Ag attendees can find the Salford team in booth D-5-246 at the show. Rawson and the team are proud to exhibit tillage and seeding equipment from Salford and Valmar, as well as nutrient applicators from the BBI Spreaders lineup.

Making its first appearance at Sunbelt Ag is Salford’s PathFinder, a steerable undercarriage designed to carry aftermarket dry and liquid fertilizer tanks for strip-till and row crop application. The PathFinder, designed to fit many aftermarket tank types, was created with Salford’s most recent acquisition in mind, the Valmar Airflo line of application products, including the Valmar ST-6 and ST-8 dry product delivery tanks.

Other features of the PathFinder include a steerable axle that can be adjusted from 120 inches up to 160 inches, developed to meet row crop and controlled traffic farming requirements, as well as standard 380/90R46 row crop tires and high clearance axle design also allow the machine to enter the field for later season applications.  Pathfinder also comes with a universal, double ball hitch, so that the cart can be coupled with virtually any leading tool bar, strip-till or tillage implement or planting equipment. 

Southern producers should be sure to check out the brand new hybrid tillage beast from Salford’s Independent Series for true vertical tillage. Launched earlier this summer, the I-4200 is built for soil productivity by combining elite residue mixing and superior field finishing capabilities seen in previously introduced I-Series machines. The I-4200 is also optimized for Salford seeding and fertilizer application attachments.

Another breakthrough tool from the I-Series, I-5100 builds on the company’s patented design to deliver the line’s first full primary tillage machine. With blades spaced at five inches in four rows, on the longest tillage frame in the Independent series, the I-5100 brings exceptional residue flow. The high-clearance individual blade mounts make this unit almost impossible to plug.

From the Valmar lineup of precision application equipment, Rawson and the team will feature a 2455 implement-mount granular applicator for both seeding and herbicide/insecticide use. 55 series applicators from Valmar achieve industry-leading precision through ground-wheel drive metering that ensures an accurate application rate, regardless of ground speed.

From the Salford BBI line of precision broadcast applicators, Rawson and company will display MagnaSpread, the industry leader in cost-in-use, a measure of precision and efficiency that drives higher yields, reduced waste, and greater profitability from targeted application of fertilizer and lime.

The hydraulic-powered MagnaSpread is an option-rich line, with a variety of sizes available (10-foot and 16-foot models will be on display at Sunbelt Ag) for applications ranging from small to mid-sized farms and golf courses all the way to versions optimized for large-acreage farms, featured in the Producer Series. All of the company’s hydraulic models feature next generation precision farming technology as standard equipment with Salford BBI’s Task Command System.  Managed through a painted-screen virtual terminal, the Task Command System features applications for field guidance and variable-rate application of nutrients.

The team will also showcase Endurance, the industry leader in the application of litter and a wide range of organic materials.  Endurance is also available in a variety of hopper sizes (16-foot and 20-foot versions will be on display at Sunbelt Ag), in pull-type and truck-mount options.  The option-rich line features standard ISOBUS connections for convenient connections to all precision farming technology, and Salford BBI’s Task Command System, featuring guidance and variable rate control, is also standard issue.

Rounding out the equipment arsenal at Sunbelt Ag are a pair of heritage mechanical applicators that built Salford BBI’s reputation for quality, durability, and precision.  Liberty is the company’s original mechanical, ground-wheel-drive spreader for fertilizer and lime applications, while Grasshopper is optimized for mid-season top-dressing of emergent plants.

For more information on the 2015 Sunbelt Ag Show, visit the show website at www.sunbeltexpo.com.