'Rally Valley' Explores Rural Brazil | by Shannon Peterson

Valley_® Irrigation Brazil embarked on a 9,000-kilometer journey last year celebrating the 60 years Valley has been the global leader in mechanized irrigation.

"Rally Valley" was a bold, innovative and adventurous project that set out to discover passion for the Valley brand among farmers, their families and communities.

It was a expedition that blazed the back roads of Brazil, recording the beauty that lives there. 

It was a journey visiting rural farmers who use Valley irrigation equipment, encouraging them to share their stories, roots, experiences, local crops and harvests.

The project created five videos that combine rich imagery and remarkable testimonials from farmers about how using mechanized irrigation changed the face of their production operation.

The video chapters were broadcast on television, the Internet and social media, and shared at events, trade shows and others places. 

Yes, the videos are in Portuguese, but they offer an intriguing glimpse of agriculture in another country and the role irrigation plays worldwide. Plus, the imagery is stunning. Kudos to the team in Brazil for trying something different!

Check out one of the episodes below or all the episodes on the Valley Brazil YouTube page. Then tell me you don’t want to head to Brazil for your next vacation or your next career.

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Shannon Peterson Marketing Content Editor Shannon joined Valley Irrigation in 2013. She writes and edits materials about irrigation equipment. Shannon enjoys traveling with her family, particularly to national parks, and she occasionally writes about her travels for tourism magazines. She also likes trying new restaurants, seeing movies, and watching Husker football and Creighton basketball.

Embrace Technology - It's Driving Agriculture | by Matt Ondrejko

Being responsible for Global Marketing provides me some great opportunities to travel the world and meet people from all over.

Last week I happened to be in Brazil at the annual Valley_® Brazilian dealer meeting. I was in the presence of several hundred dealers that bleed Valley blue - it is a good place to be.

During the meeting, I had the honor of listening to a local Brazilian speaker Silvana Goulart, who was brought in to discuss the importance of working to create prospective sales and customers through various means. One thing that struck me was her passionate plea to the Brazilian dealers to understand times are changing. The customer is changing, the way they run their businesses is changing, the way the dealer does business is changing – and it is all being driven by technology!

Matt Ondrejko and Silvana Goulart

The younger generation of farmers – inheriting the business from their parents, or buying into a farm – want to do things simpler, faster and more effectively. They want technology to help them drive decisions, increase their quality of life, allow them more family time. Oh yes, and make them more money!

This is the message being communicated in Brazil today; it is the same message and same trend being seen around the world. Sure the rate of technological adoption is different from country to country, but the simple fact is that technology is influencing the way we do business at an accelerated rate. It is changing our expectations, our perceptions and the amount of time we are willing to wait for action and results.

If we do not recognize and adopt technology to our benefit, we will lose and our competition will pass us by. This is true for any business or any walk of life. People who embrace and use technology will accelerate and succeed.

Thank you Ms. Goulart for driving home a message that is considerably important to the success of all us.

Embrace technology, use it to your benefit, help your customer use it – I promise it will reward you.

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Matt Ondrejko VP Global Marketing The one word that can sum up Matt is "enthusiasm!" He likes to be on-the-go and have fun along the way. Matt loves music and the 1980s era. He is a child of the MTV generation and has a deep appreciation of all music genres (specifically, he is a huge Dave Matthews Band groupie). Matt has traveled to more than 70 countries around the world and enjoys learning about different cultures and people. He spent three years living with his family in Leuven, Belgium, trying to enjoy as many of the 700+ beers they brew there.

Off We Go! | by Kelly Downing

Summer is finally here! Almost to the exact day, temperatures around the old homestead have warmed up into the summertime range (90°+, or 32°+ for our metric friends). All of us who worked through the significant drought last year are a little skittish about what the summer might bring. This spring has been relatively cool and wet around my house, but I can’t help thinking back to last year and how quickly (and thoroughly) things deteriorated in July and August. The latest drought index map (see below) shows that the drought is “officially” over in the eastern part of the country, but is still very real to my West and South. Being right on the border, I am certainly not getting cocky!



Last week I got to visit SE Missouri and NE Arkansas. Our cooperator near Pocahontas, Arkansas, has some nice-looking rice (photo below), so we will see what this summer brings. We have begun to shift our focus a little in the Circles for Rice program. We really seem to have shown that this system works, so we now work to simply support people who want to try growing rice with pivots, as opposed to creating and promoting demonstration plots.

With the current economic issues at work, there still seems to be pressure for growers to shift acreage to other crops, at least here in the U.S. and in Brazil. In other areas, especially Africa, the situation is a bit different, and we have been working with several growers developing rice projects using pivots as the source of irrigation. These are, generally, relatively large projects, so they take quite a bit of time to get up and running. However, we will bring you news and progress reports as they develop.

A couple nights ago, I watched a television special on the Discovery Channel: Nik Walenda walked across the Grand Canyon on a cable, suspended 1500’ above the river below, with no tether or safety harness. He kind of reminded me of a farmer. He did a tremendous job of preparing, so that it really did look easy. Not easy enough for me to try it, though!

How many of you find yourselves in similar circumstances — balancing a lot of factors both known (crop production costs, machinery issues) and unknown (the vagaries of summer weather like severe storms or drought, crop price fluctuations)? It sometimes seems like the best approach is just what he did — prepare as well as we can, then just keep putting one foot in front of the other, until we get through the current season.

The good news is, we ARE into another summer, firmly seated in the rhythm of the crop growing season. Somehow, I think that helps farmers cope with some of the other peripheral issues that pop up. There is something neat about growing a crop, and it brings us back to earth in a lot of ways. We might not know how the future is going to work out, but we do know how to recognize what is happening in our fields, and what to do about it. That process gives keeps us in our comfort zone; it allows us to focus on what we enjoy doing, and doing well. So, I encourage you to stay safe and have a great growing season. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Stay in touch, and let us know how things are going in your neck of the woods (or prairies!).

Have a comment or question on the drought in the U.S. or growing rice with center pivots? Drop us a note in the Comments box below!

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	Kelly Downing Global Irrigation Specialist Kelly, Nebraska-based Irrigation Specialist, spent 10 years working on soil and water research projects for a major agricultural university, involving a variety of crops. His work focused on irrigation management, but also included other topics.
Since joining Valley Irrigation, he has worked in the fields of Service, Product Management, Product Reliability and Sales. Kelly focuses on developing projects in irrigation field management and providing recommendations for the Circles for Rice project. Kelly has traveled to several countries providing technical support, such as soil moisture monitoring and irrigation management training.

My Experience at Agrishow Riberiao and Valmont Industria e Comercio in Brazil | by Matt Ondrejko

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Agrishow Riberiao in Brazil is one of the largest agricultural shows in the world. This show is held every year, and in 2013 celebrated its 20th year of serving the agricultural community in Brazil. I had the opportunity to visit this show in May, while on a trip to visit our key growers and dealers in the region.

The main focus of the Agrishow is to bring innovation and technology to the farmers of Brazil, and to showcase new products that can increase their efficiency and yields. As always, Valmont Irrigation had a very large presence at the show, other key international companies were there as well such as John Deere^®, Case^®, New Holland^®, and many others. The thing that struck me was the sheer size of the show and the volume of people that came to visit on any given day. On Thursday, the second day of the show, they set an all-time attendance record of 40,000 people visiting the Agrishow.

For Valley_® and myself, it was a great opportunity to discuss irrigation solutions with our key customers, as well as foster new relationships with future potential customers. We spent a lot of time sharing stories and discussing how irrigation solutions are applied in Brazil, and the similarities that we see globally between different regions. We were proud to win the Silver Award for Innovation at the Agrishow for the introduction of our Valley Corner into the Brazilian market. It was exciting for the whole Brazilian team and something they were certainly proud of!

The spirit of the Brazilian people is contagious, and their passion for innovative solutions to agricultural management is impressive. It was a great trip and one that I took a lot away from. I am looking forward to my next trip to Brazil!

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Matt Ondrejko VP Global Marketing Matt is the newest addition to the Valley Irrigation Global Marketing Department. The one word that can sum up Matt is "enthusiasm"! He likes to be on-the-go and have fun along the way. Matt loves music and the 1980s era. He is a child of the MTV generation and has a deep appreciation of all music genres (specifically, he is a huge Dave Matthews Band groupie). Matt has traveled to more than 70 countries around the world and enjoys learning about different cultures and people. He spent three years living with his family in Leuven, Belgium, trying to enjoy as many of the 700+ beers they brew there.

Brazil Farmers Remain Optimistic, Embrapa Trials | by Kelly Downing

I was in Brazil a couple weeks ago, meeting with rice growers and researchers. The market for rice was relatively weak in Brazil this season, similar to that in the USA in 2011. As a result, most of the commercial growers we have worked with in the past reduced rice acreage in favor of soybean and corn production. However, as I visited with them, they are still optimistic about growing rice under center pivots, and intend to return to the crop next season, as part of their regular rotation.

On March 6, I attended the Expodireto agricultural show, in Rio Grande do Sul state, which was very impressive. Lots of ag equipment manufacturers, including center pivot companies. The grounds are beautifully landscaped, and the streets are paved, which is a big change from most farm shows here in the USA, and it cuts down greatly on the dust. Although it was extremely hot (>90 F), there was a large crowd. It seemed to me to reflect great optimism among the Brazilian farmers—prices are good, profits are up and they are investing in the future.

I also met with researchers who are working on several projects and attended a field day. Embrapa is a Brazilian federal ag research corporation, and they have a temperate climate research center near Pelotas. Their rice field day on March 9 was very well attended. They devoted one of the four main tour stops to the work they are doing under a linear. These studies include variety trials, fertility studies, irrigation scheduling strategy, greenhouse gas production and their efforts to transfer nitrogen-fixing bacteria into rice roots.

At another of their research stations, near Bage´, they are working on variety trials and rotation studies, to help farmers optimize crop rotations that include rice, soybeans, and forage crops. This is a region with a historically strong cattle industry, but rice and soybeans are beginning to expand acreage in the area, so this research is very important to the future of the ag economy there.

The rice harvest was just beginning, and will probably last at least through March and into our spring. The plots at Pelotas will be harvested by the end of this month or so, and we will have some data to improve our knowledge of how things went. Although their plots looked great and appeared very productive, it is always good to have the real data to confirm your expectations.

So, here we are at the cusp of spring in the USA. A new growing season is almost upon us and everyone is again optimistic. We anticipate several new cooperators who will plant rice under center pivots this year in the USA. I look forward, like you do, to seeing how things play out, and I am excited about working our way through the season together.