Among the most popular activities were field demonstrations. Attendees lined the fields to watch demos of alfalfa hay mowing, hay chopping and merging, hay rakes and tedders, high-moisture hay baling and bale handling.

A special demonstration featured the Penn State Cover-Crop Interseeder. Developed by Penn State agricultural scientists, this technology is designed to seed a cover crop into no-till corn, while simultaneously applying fertilizer and post-emergence herbicide.

Seeding the cover crop at an early growth stage of corn gives the cover crop time to get established before late-season harvest of the corn, and combining three tasks into one pass of the field saves time and money and makes cover cropping more economically feasible.

Sponsored by the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, this year's Ag Progress Days set a record with nearly 500 commercial and educational exhibits, giving visitors the chance to shop for goods and services, learn about new ag research and technology, and get advice from Penn State faculty experts and extension educators.

Visitors also took advantage of 11 tours of research projects, both at the Larson Research Center and on Penn State's University Park campus. Topics included beef and sheep production, cropping system innovation, pasture management and high-density grazing, short-rotation woody crops for biomass, stream buffers and native prairie grasses, and other research.

Also among Ag Progress Days attractions were farm-safety demonstrations, horse events, family-living exhibits, hands-on youth activities, food demos and gardening presentations.  FG

—Information from Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences