By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

CANTON, Ohio — The best part of his business, said Bob Clapper – who, with his wife, Marie, owns Ag Nation – is meeting the people who he has sold products to and seeing how happy they are, knowing that he has “done the job” for farmers.

“I always tell the farmers that we farm too, and if the product isn’t going to benefit the farmers more than anybody else, I’m not going to fool with it; that’s been my motto,” he said.

Ag Nation is a wholesale company that markets through dealers and distributors. A soil penetrant was the first product it put on the market about 30 years ago.

“It was designed to break up the heavy clay soil, to move water through the soil, Clapper said. “It helps the soil warm up faster in the spring.”

The company added a line of forage seeds but then sold that business to Rupp Seeds in Wauseon. Ag Nation is still a distributor for Rupp and Clapper plants the seeds in his fields to produce feed for his own cattle herd. Likewise, he has wrapped thousands of high-moisture hay bales with the bale wrapper he sells.

“We have been representatives for that product since 1993, for a company out of Maryland. About five years ago the owner wanted to retire, so we bought the business and moved it over to Ohio. Our bale wrappers are made in Holmes County,” Clapper said.
Ag Nation also offers custom grazing – the couple have about 500 acres. One year, in fact, Clapper met Bob Evans at a grazing clinic at the Jackson Research Center. Evans was advocating the economic advantages of grazing.

“It sounded interesting to me, so I came home and we put up eight miles of high-tensile wire and started grazing,” he said. “We do custom grazing for dairy farmers with the heifers through the summer months, and we also graze stock or cattle.”

They have 22 different paddocks on the 500 acres. And their grandchildren, Nichole Clapper, Chrystal Parker and Andy Parker, are always ready to help when it is time to move cattle.
“When I need to move cattle, they jump in their boots and away they go,” Clapper said.

A while back the family nicknamed their farm “Clapperville.”
When they bought a used fire truck to use for irrigating their sweet corn, they named it the “Clapperville Express.” One thing led to another, and the family was soon decorating the truck and taking it to parades.

“It is a big hit – whenever we pull in, people say ‘Here comes the Clapperville fire truck.’”

For information on Ag Nation visit its booth at the National Farm Machinery Show, go to www.agnation.com or phone 800-247-3276.