Word: pfisters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Miracle of the Seed. Farmer Pfister (rhymes with Easter) is the biggest U.S. individual grower of hybrid seed corn. This year his six-year-old Pfister Hybrid Corn Co. will gross about $1,500,000, net some $60,000 to $70,000, which Lester...
...Pfister will plow back into equipment. By this weekend, he will have helped plant 4,800 acres with his special inbred strains...
...same time, 26,000 corn belt farmers from eastern Ohio to middle Nebraska are planting his seed corn-and by late .summer the tassels of Pfister strains will have over 5,000,000 acres. The hardy hybrid corns, grown by Pfister and others,* have wrought a U.S. agricultural revolution. Last year they pushed the national average yield of corn, once only 25 bu. per acre, to a record 42.7 bu. In Pfister's own county, the yield was 66 bu. per acre...
...restless Lester Pfister, the revolution was a long time coming. A farm boy who quit school in the eighth grade to work in the cornfields at $30 a month, he has been inbreeding and crossbreeding corn since 1925. Neighbors, watching him tie paper bags over corn tassels and ear shoots to control fertilization, called him "Crazy Lester." To keep up his experiments he mortgaged everything he owned. When depression hit, he stalled off bankruptcy only by ducking meetings of his creditors. One day he went to an El Paso bank to plead for a last-ditch loan. Unwrapping a newspaper...
...Harvest. Today, at 51, Pfister is the president and major stockholder of a bank which once refused him a loan. He employs 107 full-time workers, and in the weeks of "detasseling" (just before the strains are pollinated) recruits 1.500 helpers from nearby high schools. His payroll is $400,000 a year, the value of his land and equipment $1,800,000. He is a smart businessman and works hard at it, but looks tired and bored in his office. His eyes light up only when he gets out in a field...