Headed by the Wehmeyer family, Mascoutah’s AgriMAXX has expanded into the Central Plains, taking a new high-performance wheat variety specifically developed for and adapted to Kansas growing environments to the fields.
This expansion means AgriMAXX seeds now are distributed in 25 states.
Here’s what else Matt Wehmeyer, director of sales and marketing, had to say about their new wheat variety — AM Eastwood — and their step further west.
How is this new wheat variety different from those in Illinois?
It’s is a hard red winter wheat for the Kansas and Central Plains market. Here in Illinois, it’s soft red winter wheat, so the main difference is the protein levels. Hard red winter wheat can be 2 to 4 percent higher.
When you get into the Central Plains, it’s predominately about hard red winter wheat for the end-use markets for the high protein levels and the baking characteristics. There are also variety adaptations.
When you get one county into Kansas, it’s a pretty hard line between hard red and soft red. Soft red tends to be higher yielding, low protein wheat and hard red is lower yielding, higher protein wheat.
What kind of resources does your company put into a new variety?
A lot. By the time we have a variety launched, we want to know all of the strengths and weaknesses, where it works and where it doesn’t work. At the end of the day, we want our customers to be the most profitable they can be. So we’ll do the homework on the backside, and by the time we develop this through, they can be confident with us.