Last year, the United Soybean Board wanted soybean farmers to learn more about how their checkoff program was helping their bottom line. Thus, the See For Yourself program was created. After a successful first year, the program was continued, and this year, 10 soybean farmers representing eight states, went on a trip to see how the soybeans they grow are being used throughout the world.
Ohio soybean farmer Christopher Gibbs (seventh from left) and United Soybean Board Audit and Evaluation Chair Jim Stillman (sixth from right) take time out from a walking tour of downtown Guadalajara, Mexico to pose with the rest of the See for Yourself participants for a group photograph.
This year, the group started in St. Louis and from there went to Guadalajara, Mexico. I wasn’t on the trip but I had a chance to talk with two growers who were. Jim Stillman, USB’s Audit and Evaluation Chair and a soybean farmer from Emmetsburg, Iowa and Christopher Gibbs, a soybean farmer from Maplewood, Ohio.
Gibbs heard about the program online. He said of his experience, “I didn’t have any real examples of how the soybean dollars were being used, and this trip gave me a real opportunity to see this first hand. I think the goal of this trip was met.” He encourages anyone who is interested in learning more about the program to apply for next year’s trip.
Stillman gave me the rundown on everything they saw and did which you can hear in the interview below. “All the farmers were very impressed and quite in awe of all the things the soybean board is doing in the international markets. We will call on these farmers throughout the year,” said Stillman, “to have them talk about their experiences.”
You can hear about Christpher Gibbs’ and Jim Stillman’s expereinces first-hand in the back-to-back interviews below.
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- Phyllis Parks, CPA, CVA, an accountant from Danville, IL, was elected to serve as the president of the Farm Financial Standards Council.
- Arenus recently donated a supply of their joint health product, STEADFAST EQUINE, to NARHA centers nationwide.
- The new Genome Alberta GenOmics Facebook application will be a one stop source for genomics and other related ‘omics’ news including nutrigenomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics.
- The Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) is launching the 2010 Yield Challenge, slated to kick off after Labor Day and continue through next year’s growing season. Applications are due by April 1, 2010.
It’s that time. Time for the 2009 Farm Progress Show. I know a lot of people and a lot of work has been going on in Decatur, IL already and I’ll be on location tomorrow afternoon. Cindy and Carly will be going to their first FPS. It looks like they’ll have some great weather. That’ll be a change.
Before we head out I’d like to thank our sponsors for this year’s AgWired coverage. They are New Holland and BASF. Over on our Precision Pays website we’ll have coverage sponsored by Ag Leader Technology.
It’s going to be a busy show. I’ve got a list of events and Tuesday is just going to be a back to back day of photos and interviews. So keep it right here if you can’t make it.
AgWired coverage of the 2009 Farm Progress Show
is sponsored by: 
and 
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has mounted a campaign against the nomination of Cass Sunstein to be the White House’s “Regulatory Czar” in order to prevent a “litigation nightmare.”
ALG President Bill Wilson sent letters last week to farm organizations urging them to actively oppose the nomination. “What concerns me and I am sure will concern you is Mr. Sunstein’s extreme positions on animal rights,” Wilson wrote in his letter to the agricultural sector. “If put into law or regulation, these radical stands will destroy agriculture and threaten America’s ability to feed itself much less do any exporting of agricultural products.” Wilson says Sunstein favors granting legal rights to animals and “further regulation” against hunting, animal testing and farming.
To make their point in a pretty funny way, ALG released this “Farce Side” cartoon (with apologies to Gary Larson, creator of “The Far Side”). While the cartoon is amusing, Sustein’s extreme animal rights beliefs could prove to be very serious indeed if his nomination is approved. As an example of Sustein’s views, read his “The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer” – a very scary treatise in which he says “there is no good reason to permit the level of suffering now being experienced by millions, even billions of living creatures.”
Sunstein has been nominated to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget. This post is also known as the “Regulatory Czar,” since all major regulatory actions by the federal government are subject to review by this office. The current status of his nomination is that it will require 60 votes in the Senate to invoke cloture after Senate Republicans earlier this month blocked a unanimous consent resolution to approve Sunstein without any roll call.
ALG is recommending that farmers and ranchers and all Americans who want “to have the right to choose what to eat and purchase at the grocery store” to urge their senators to vote against Sustein’s nomination.
What do you think of when you hear that there’s a sled running on biodiesel? Probably not thinking tractor pull sled are you? Unless you’re a tractor pull fan. Well those big machines that the tractors and trucks pull are also diesel powered and in Jefferson City, MO there’s a company that manufactures them and runs them on biodiesel.
The company is Bungart Motor Sports and I learned about if from Donnie Bungart. Thanks to Tom Steever, Brownfield Network, for the picture.
Donnie says they do over 160 shows a year around the country. At the Midwest Extreme Truck and Tractor Pull in Jefferson City he says they had two sleds in operation. He says they run B20 in them and have been for over 3 years very successfully. Donnie says they’ve had a lot of luck locating the fuel when they need it, especially at major truck stops.
So if you’re not a tractor pulling enthusiast you might ask, “What’s a sled?” Donnie says it’s a weight transfer machine. It starts out not weighing much but as the tractor pulls it more and more weight is transferred which ultimately stops the tractor. At least we hope! Thanks again to the United Soybean Board for inviting me out to the tractor pull.
You can listen to my interview with Donnie below:
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This soybean grower from Missouri doesn’t plant corn with the machine he’s standing next too. No way. But he does power it with a biodiesel blend and compete in tractor pulls across the United States. He’s Dennis Shramek and one of the competitors in this weekend’s NTPA Midwest Extreme Truck and Tractor Pull. Thank you to the United Soybean Board for inviting me out.
I met him early Friday evening long before his class was set to compete. Dennis grows soybeans and corn in central Missouri. He says they do a lot of no-till. Besides growing crops he’s got this AGCO DT225 which he competes with for points. He says they run over 3,000 horsepower! They blend their own biodiesel and jug it up and bring it along to the event. He gets better lubrication with biodiesel than pure low sulfur diesel. He says they’ve been competing with this tractor for about 6 years and they’ll compete at least 16 to 18 times a season.
Dennis is sure that the biodiesel industry will grow since it’s a clean fuel and helps the U.S. economy and helps reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
You can listen to my interview with Dennis below:
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McCormick Company is celebrating 20 years in business and held a great event yesterday to not only enjoy this milestone but assist a good cause at the same time. Thanks to Janell Aust for the information and photo.
McCormick Company teamed up with clients, suppliers, local businesses and employees on Thursday, August 27, to celebrate 20 years of McCormick operating in Kansas City. In conjunction with the celebration, McCormick hosted a food drive with the goal of 20,000 cans for the local Harvesters food bank. That goal was met and exceeded with 27,045 cans for Harvesters.
“There’s really no better way to celebrate being a part of the Kansas City community,” said Mark Perrin, President of McCormick Company. “We get to help families in Kansas City by teaming up with local businesses and companies to reach our goal. We’re very pleased with the successful outcome.”
In addition to the charity food drive, guests enjoyed live music by Retro Inferno, food from Gates Bar-B-Q and beverages provided by local companies. Riverside RED X helped coordinate food donations made prior to the event and assisted McCormick in delivering food supplies.
In the photo Debbie Haws with McCormick Company, adds another box to the stacks of more than 27,000 cans of food collected during the company’s celebration of 20 years in Kansas City.
New Holland is brave enough to wear pink. New Holland compact tractors in Australia that is.
New Holland, the global agricultural and construction equipment maker, commissioned Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) to paint five of its new compact tractors pink as part of the equipment maker’s drive to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Australia.
The WWL team dissembled, painted and reassembled the tractors at its specialist technical services facility in Port Kembla, the closest specialist industrial port to Sydney, Australia.
The National Breast Cancer Foundation will receive a $1000 (AUSD) donation from New Holland for each tractor sold.
Breast cancer is the most invasive cancer diagnosed in Australian women and it is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in women.
The New Holland Pink Tractor Campaign will see the tractors on display at agricultural shows across Australia in the forthcoming months.
WWL handles a significant amount of important high and heavy RoRo equipment for customisation through its vehicle processing centres in Brisbane, Port Kembla, Melbourne and Fremantle with automotive processing capacity at select locations.
‘Think Pink’ is a joint initiative between New Holland Agriculture and National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) which aims to increase awareness of breast cancer in rural Australia and raise funds towards research and support services provided by the Foundation.
Since we made the change in our AgWired Mobile service this week by working with Joel Jaeger at Commodity Update I thought I’d get him on the phone to find out how things are going in the text messaging world and discuss these new media communications platforms we’ve been developing.
There is a growing amount of data from public sources like USDA-NASS to private (Nicholson Kovac, Successful Farming) that shows how fast the adoption of web based social and new media and mobile phone technology is among farmers. This means that companies and their ad agencies are scrambling to take advantage of the low cost investment in mechanisms that let them communicate directly with their customers and members. I’m betting that agribusiness still shows a lower rate of social media adoption than the general public but that gap is narrowing in my opinion. According to a post on Mashable, 2/3 of marketers now use social media in some capacity. The few who still aren’t don’t cite that they see a lack of value in social media but rather that they don’t know where to begin or how to measure effectiveness. This according to a story on eMarketer. Ahh, that measurable effectiveness thing. I just wonder how marketers measure the effectiveness of any campaign, including ones that use traditional media options. Do you know? I don’t believe that “impressions” necessarily means anything. I’d rather know how much product I sold as a result of my marketing investment. How are you measuring that? Are you measuring that?
So, listen to my conversation with Joel as we kind of ramble along about these subjects and bring up some anecdotes from our own experiences.
The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page.
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- The 5th annual Missouri Friends of Injured Marines Golf Outing will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 30, 2009, at the Country Club at the Legends in Eureka, Mo.
- New Holland’s new H5920 deluxe carted wheel rake builds windrows perfectly matched for crop and field conditions.
- Swanson Russell has won the assignment to work with AGCO on marketing communications for the Challenger brand of agricultural equipment.
- Asoyia recently added Ann Utter to their staff as assistant grower program manager. Utter will be responsible for monitoring and managing the production of identity preserved Asoyia ULTRA low linolenic soybeans to ensure quality standards are met.
- Farm Progress Companies has retooled and launched FarmFutures.com to provide users with a more feature-packed and flexible Internet portal.
If you’re going to the Farm Progress Show and you have never participated in AgChat, the weekly Twitter conversation/community for agriculture, then you’re going to have several chances to learn more about it. AgChat will be on display along with all the latest products and services. AgChat is for farmers, in fact for anyone involved in providing food, fuel, feed and fiber as well as consumers. The audience is growing and it’s providing some good interaction with people who want and need to understand agriculture today.
“AgChat gives farmers a stronger voice and leverages the power of the agricultural community,” notes Michele Payn-Knoper, Certified Speaking Professional and founder of #AgChat. “We see upwards of 1,000 “tweets” during our two hour discussion every Tuesday night, cementing this tool as an important venue for sharing views and ideas on current food and farm topics, from antibiotic use to mainstream media misinformation about agriculture.”
On Tuesday, September 1, Farm Progress attendees can learn more about this social media tool at two #AgChat events:
• Tweetup: A networking and #AgChat demonstration for those in agriculture who are a part of Twitter, or want to see it in action. From 3-5 p.m., in the Country Financial tent, booth 749 on 7th Street, join Payn-Knoper and others in the #AgChat community, who will answer any questions you have. Refreshments will be served.
• #AgChat live: Join other farmers and agribusiness to participate in this fast-paced streaming “convo” on Twitter. Tweet and talk with several of the chat regulars, or just watch the community in action. Payn-Knoper will be moderating live from Farm Progress, 7-9 p.m., in the Decatur Conference Center & Hotel Illini Room. Bioenergy is the topic for the Sept. 1 chat. Other #AgChat participants will be joining in the streaming conversation from locations around the world.
“Our goal is to pull back the curtain for the next wave of adopters of these tools, and to reveal both the simplicity and power of social media in communicating about agriculture. We want farmers to experience that special act of reaching out across the virtual fence to communicate not only with other farmers, but with moms, journalists and others who are interested in gaining a broader perspective on food and agriculture. It also gives us an opportunity to ‘listen louder’ to thought leaders and consumers about their food interests.”
There are still hog producers in business in Iowa and they are more dedicated than ever to producing a quality product for consumers at the best price possible.
That was my take away from a meeting I attended this week in Washington, IA to gather some audio, photos and video for our friends at PIC International to use for some on-line marketing. PIC stands for Pig Improvement Company and account manager John Jeckel says the company was started 40 years ago by a half dozen pork producers in England to improve the genetics of their animals. “PIC’s competitive advantage in the market place is feed efficiency and growth rate,” John says.
But genetics can only do so much and the rest is up to the producer. Cliff Jones with PIC’s tech services says they work with producers to help them achieve the maximum genetic potential from their animals with the proper care and he gave the producers in Washington an abbreviated version of PIC’s Farm Managers Boot Camp that they sponsor. “The key focus point is just to pay attention to the pigs,” Cliff says.
What was really interesting to me was the fact that these producers are really dedicated to taking the best possible care of their animals. “Take care of the pigs just like you would take care of your family,” Cliff said. “Take care of the animals and feed the world, that’s what our focus should be.”
Listen to an interview with John and Cliff here:
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More of the BASF ag divisions are entering the social media world. Now BASF Plant Sciences has unveiled a new blog for NutriDense. It’s refreshing to see agencies that are becoming more willing to work with their clients on these types of projects.
The blog will be updated regularly with podcasts, videos and articles from BASF Plant Science executives and NutriDense technical staff. The Web site features the striking look of the NU Day advertising campaign as well as product information, customer video testimonials and an updated media kit.
“The NutriDense blog was created to educate and inform readers about the exciting work going on at NutriDense and BASF Plant Science,” said Fran Castle, BASF Plant Science North American group communication manager. “The blog provides an ideal way to connect with customers and stakeholders through postings relevant to agricultural biotechnology and animal nutrition. After reading blog posts, listening to podcasts or watching videos, followers can join in the conversation by leaving comments.”
Visit the blog at www.nutridense.com/blog, and the Web site at www.nutridense.com.
Our Precision Pays.com website welcomes new long term sponsor, Ag Leader Technology. Besides direct advertising on the site they’re sponsoring a weekly story called “Insights Weekly.” You can read the first installment below.
As we’re well into the dog days of summer, Midwest corn and soybean harvest is looming larger. If you haven’t started combine prep already, it’s time to dust off those owner’s manuals to fine-tune the machine and its data-gathering electronics.
Ag Leader Technology, a sponsor of PrecisionPays.com, offers some good advice in a pre-harvest checklist for owners of their InSight and EDGE displays:
• Create a backup of your spring information.
• Select Copy All Files to save the spring data to the memory card.
• Make sure your display firmware, manual and all connected modules are up-to-date.
• Firmware and manual updates can be found on its website under Support. If you have purchased a new combine or new heads, create new configurations for any setup that is different from last fall. Remove all old configurations.
Combine Inspection
• Check to make sure all cables are properly attached and in good condition.
• Remove flow sensor and inspect for damage.
• Check the elevator deflector and impact plate for wear. Verify you have the proper clearance at the top of the clean grain elevator. Clearance should be between 3/8” and 5/8”.
Other items on the Ag Leader checklist include: sensor calibration, header stop height, distance calibration, temperature and moisture check and grain weight. Consult your manual in all cases. And if you’ve lost it, you can find them on the website.
For more information on pre-harvest preparation, Check out these links:
Yield monitor calibration: Garbage in garbage out – Purdue University.
Yield monitor calibration tips – Ohio State University.
Tips to cut combine breakdowns – Corn & Soybean Digest.
Ag Leader Technology publishes a periodic newsletter called “Insights.” You can subscribe to an rss feed of their news releases and the newsletter with this link.
We’re making a major change to our AgWired Mobile service starting today. As many of you who have subscribed know, we’ve been sending custom text messages via AgWired Mobile when we see important information that we believe you’d be interested in knowing. Feedback has been great. However, we found that most of what we posted via AgWired Mobile was also being posted on AgWired which was a real duplication of effort.
With the help of Commodity Update’s Joel Jaeger, we built a way to direct the AgWired feed to our mobile text service so subscribers will now receive texts for each post on AgWired containing the post title and link to the post. We’ve set it up to only send texts between 8am and 8pm central time since you know that we do some late night posts. We won’t be waking you up with texts in the middle of the night!
In addition to this announcement we’re also implementing a mobile phone web browser version of AgWired and all the ZimmComm News Network sites that include Domestic Fuel.com, Precision Pays.com and World Dairy Diary.com. We hope to have that implemented very soon. Then when you get your AgWired Mobile text on your phone the link will take you to a very simple text only version of the post/website. Now how’s that for some new innovation?
To sign up for AgWired Mobile all you have to do is text the word agwired to 46786 and you will get your AgWired news fresh and conveniently wherever you are. Don’t wind up wishing you had seen a story but didn’t have the time or ability to check online.
The Gateway NAMA board met yesterday for some program/membership planning. I’m waiting on a summary of what we accomplished to help with member communications. I can tell you that we’ve been pretty inactive but with some fresh talent in leadership hopefully we’ll change that around this coming year. We’re looking at a mix of fun and educational sessions that will be of interest to all members.
I just thought I’d share this with you and encourage you to become a NAMA member and get involved in your nearest chapter or at least participate in the national events like the annual convention or fall Trends In Agriculture conference. You’ll be glad you did even for no other reason than the networking and contacts you’ll make.
Do you understand things like indirect land use when it comes to regulations via departments like the EPA due to the RFS? Me either. And I’ve sat in on conferences and discussions and interviews on the subject for a while now. That’s because an issue like indirect land use involves predicting the future based on certain assumptions that may or may not be valid, especially if they’re based on out of date data and information. So that’s part of what the NCGA is dealing with at their Land Use and Carbon Impacts of Corn-Based Ethanol Conference which has many different presenters talking about their models and research. A large crowd is gathered to ask them questions.
The Conference Chairman is Jamey Cline, NCGA Director Biofuels and Business Development. I caught up to him on a break to learn why NCGA was conducting this event and what they hope to achieve as a result.
Jamey says that regulations from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and from EPA on the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) have brought up a number of questions and this conference was put together to ask them and receive answers in a public forum with various stakeholders. A lot of these current or proposed regulations are based on assumptions and economic theory and so questions need to be asked to make sure the latest data is being used and reasonable predictions are made for the future. He says that these issues are extremely important to agribusiness and corn growers in particular because if the CARB regs hold up, by 2012 they will effectively shut off that market to ethanol. Additionally, one presenter said that due to the proposed climate change bill and RFS, approximately 27.1 million acres would be taken out of production across the Unites States. That would have a huge impact on our economy, especially in rural areas.
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- Mani Iyer, President of Mahindra USA Inc. in Tomball, Texas, has been named to the Board of Directors of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
- The 2009 STIHL Dogs and Logs World Championship presented by STEADFAST CANINE was held last month in Stillwater, MN, gathering the world’s top DockDogs and Ironjacks (elite competitive lumberjacks). This year’s competition featured the top 54 DockDogs and top 8 Ironjacks in North America.
- The U.S. Soybean Federation Board of Directors met to continue setting direction for the policy and advocacy organization. Directors established a new policy priority for the organization: Cap and Trade.
- In order to fund the year-long project of digitizing, indexing and placing 88 years of journals on the internet, the Poultry Science Association Foundation has created The Legacy Project.
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