World champion soybean grower Kip Cullers got a plaque from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and a crystal globe trophy from the Missouri Soybean Association for breaking the soybean yield record again. But, MachineryLink presented the “Crop King” with a more practical honor – an embroidered pair of his trademark overalls.
Todd Branson and Mark Gabrick were on hand at the Country Cupboard in Stark City, Missouri yesterday when the announcement was made that Kip broke his own yield record again, with 160.6 bushels per acre on his 2010 test fields. “We wanted to give him something he could actually use,” they said.
MachineryLink, which maintains the largest private fleet of combines in North America, is headquartered in Kansas City and is one of several companies that partners with the soybean champion. Our friends at BASF are also proud to be partners with Kip, and they have set up a special spot on their Facebook page to send congrats to Kip. I mean, really – over 160 bushels per acre!? Holy cow! That’s worth a note of appreciation. Send him one here.
The Cotton Board, Memphis, Tenn., is pleased to announce William A. “Bill” Gillon as its new President and CEO.
The man who has served as executive director of the Coalition to Support Iowa’s Farmers since its inception six years ago, Aaron Putze, has accepted a position with the Iowa Soybean Association.
Balchem Corporation announced the addition of Ric Grummer, Ph.D. to its Animal Nutrition and Health Division. He will assume the new position of ruminant technical director.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon traveled down to the southwest corner of the state to congratulate world champion soybean producer Kip Cullers who broke his previous record yet again with 160.6 bushels per acre on his 2010 test fields.
“Agriculture is the backbone of Missouri’s economy, and growers like Kip Cullers are the reason why,” said Governor Nixon. “Missouri farmers feed, fuel and clothe the world, and they also create jobs, support local businesses and help our communities thrive. When it comes to soybeans, Kip Cullers continues to take the science to a whole new level, and his work is blazing new trails that will keep Missouri agriculture moving forward.”
One of the secrets to Kip’s soybean growing success is BASF products like Kixor herbicide technology and Headline fungicide, so BASF is providing a way for the agriculture industry to congratulate him on this achievement.
“We are pleased to announce that we are rallying all of agriculture to congratulate Kip,” said Paul Rea, Vice President, US Crop, BASF. “BASF employees will be leading the way in sending personal congratulations to Kip on our Facebook page SuperSoy landing tab, and through Twitter using hashtag #SuperSoy.”
To send your congratulations, go to the SuperSoy landing tab on the BASF Crop Protection Facebook page and upload your personal message of congratulations to Kip Cullers. BASF will present Kip with an album of all the congratulations received during Commodity Classic 2011.
Listen to remarks by Dale Ludwig with Missouri Soybean Association, Governor Nixon and Kip here: 2010 Soybean Yield Award
One of our TATT Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable participants is Pam Johnson, Iowa farmer. Pam is a board member of the National Corn Growers Association. She is not only participating in the roundtable discussions but was also on the panel of this morning’s Biodiversity World Tour town hall mtg.
I spoke with Pam before the afternoon roundtable session got underway. She farms corn and soybeans with her husband and sons in northern Iowa. She says this discussion has been great for her because farmers share a lot of the same issues and concerns around the world. She thought this morning’s town hall meeting was a good one with an audience that understands that there are a lot of definitions for terms like sustainability. She says that the point was made that farmers are working hard to be productive while maintaining a viable business and taking care of their land and other resources. She hopes that the farmers visiting the United States will take away the idea that they have to be able to operate in an atmosphere where their government policy, the public and consumers work with farmers. In other words, it’s not an “us vs. them” situation.
The TATT Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable is now in session. This is a discussion which will take place this evening and continue tomorrow morning with a concluding lunch.
After introductions we’re now involved in a discussion about issues like the growing world population and challenges faces farmers who are trying to produce food to feed them all. I’m listening in and will be conducting some interviews with various participants to post in coming days. There are some very interesting farmers here from a variety of types of farms.
The Truth About Trade & Technology Global Farmer To Farmer Roundtable participants went from meeting with our Sec. of Agriculture to a tour of the Iowa State University Seed Science Center. It was a short but fascinating look at the largest public seed testing facility in the country.
We got a real behind the scenes look at the various labs before heading off to our next stop on the Bill Couser farm, Couser Cattle Company. I’ve just updated the photo album and will have more interviews coming.
Here’s our panel at the Biodiversity World Tour town hall mtg. with Sec. of Ag Vilsack (right). It has been a very interesting discussion with lots of questions about organic vs. traditional agriculture and sustainability. I believe you’ll be able to watch a recording of the session on the BWT website.
The participants include:
Rajesh Kumar, Vegetable Farmer from Tamil Nadu, India.
Camila Illich, Field Crop Farmer from Guarapuava, Brazil
Pam Johnson, Corn and Soybean Farmer from Central Iowa, United States.
Gary Munkvold, Seed Science Endowed Chair, Chair of the Graduate Program in Seed Technology and Business, Iowa State University.
Judy Chambers, Director of the Program for Biosafety Systems in the Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI, Senior Advisor to USAID.
Our moderator is Orion Samuelson, WGN (left).
After this morning’s session I’ll be following the TATT Global Farmer To Farmer Roundtable participants to a farm tour before we return to Des Moines for their opening session. So I’ll see you along the way, especially on Twitter.
U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was an opening speaker at the Biodiversity World Tour stop on the campus of Iowa State University. It is being webcast live right now and I believe a recorded version will be available later. If you’d like to hear the Secretary’s comments I have them posted below.
The theme of the town hall meeting taking place here is “How can we feed a growing world while protecting our environment?”
World Food Prize week is underway in Des Moines, IA. There are a lot of meeting, town halls, roundtables, symposiums, ceremonies taking place, some simultaneously. I’m going to be focusing on the Truth About Trade and Technology Global Farmer To Farmer Roundtable. So to kick things off I spoke with TATT Chairman, Dean Kleckner.
He says that there are 16 farmers here this year from various countries including the United States, to have a discussion on farming where they live, and to do it in a public forum to foster better understanding between countries and the general public. He’s says it has been interesting to hear how similar the challenges are throughout the world. I’m planning to feature interviews with as many of the farmer participants as I can during the next couple days.
Soybean superstar Kip Cullers is going to officially announce his 2010 soybean yield results today at a press conference near his farm in Purdy, Missouri.
Kip set the world soybean yield record in 2006 with 139 bushels per acre, then beat that the following year with a yield of 154.57 bushels per acre. When another grower achieved a yield of more than 100 bushels per acre in 2008, the 100 Bushel Club was formed and Kip was inducted.
Today’s news conference will include Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and representatives of the Missouri Soybean Association, who are understandably proud of this native son. Also, the good folks from BASF will be there – and me, too! Can’t wait to see my friend Kip again – and his lovely wife Michelle and their little brood. I took this photo of Kip during his soybean harvest last year.
Need a good excuse to dine out this week? Well, the American Farmland Trust invites you to have a meal out on the town in support of farms in this country now through October 16th:
“We hope that many consumers will be a friend to farms and join us at the table during the national Dine Out for Farms™ week October 10-16,” says Jon Scholl, President of American Farmland Trust (AFT). “Restaurants in 17 states signed up to participate in this inaugural event because the chefs recognize the need to protect America’s farmland and support family farmers. Farmland is a key ingredient that farmers need to be able to grow provisions for restaurateurs and our own kitchen tables.”
This national, week-long event is designed to bring together restaurants and consumers together to support a sustainable future for America’s farms. Scholl wants to make sure people make the connection with food and the land.
“It’s never been more critical than it is today for diners and consumers to reconnect with the farmers who grow their food. That’s not only so we can have farm-fresh food but also because of the critical issues facing our nation—including food security and healthier diets,” Scholl adds. “The United States has been losing nearly one million acres of farmland each year, and the farms and farmland most under threat are near cities where the majority of our dairy, fresh fruits and vegetables are grown.”
And as Oliver Monday with The Market Restaurant in Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of the participating restaurants, points out, “Without land, there will be no farms. Without farms, there will be no food.”
The book I read over the weekend now has a special place on my shelf since I have actually experienced a small portion of what author Tom Rivers describes in “Farm Hands“. The book is an accumulation of his writings for his local newspaper, The Daily News, where he chronicles the labor challenges faced by small farm operations in Upstate New York. While narrating his experiences of picking fruit, planting vegetables in the pouring rain and milking cows at the crack of dawn, among others, he also eloquently tells the stories of the immigrants who he worked beside each day.
Why was this an important and book worthy endeavor? Because Americans feel their jobs are being taken by illegal immigrants – jobs they feel are rightfully theirs. However, this is only partially true. Many difficult and grueling farm jobs are in fact taken on by immigrants, many in the States as part of a special farm labor program. However, the jobs are available because Americans don’t want them. They are low paying and high intensity positions. Yet without these immigrants, most of the farm operations would no longer be able to financially survive.
To learn more about why Americans don’t want these farm jobs, for one year Rivers became a farm hand at various operations near his home. While working next to men and women who have come to the States from other countries, Rivers discovered that working on a farm is one of the hardest jobs imaginable. He lost more than 30 pounds during the year and spent countless hours nurturing sore muscles. The result was rewarding though, after the year ended, he successfully completed the Disney Marathon.
I too understand how difficult work it is having lived and worked on a produce and fruit operation for several months. I can honestly say that I do not have the fortitude to pursue this kind of work; yet I have a much greater understanding and respect for those who toil away in the fields to put food on my table. Quite frankly, I’d rather make the same amount of money working in a coffee shop for minimum wage and tips (something I’ve actually done extensively) and I’m not alone.
The labor issue has become very prominent in the U.S. this year due to many states, particularly Arizona that are attempting to curb illegal immigration. In response to this issue, along with ramped unemployment in the country, the United Farm Workers launched a “Take Our Jobs” campaign. To my knowledge, Americans are not jumping off couches to “take their jobs”.
That said, the next time you’re eating dinner and you’re about to lament the immigrants who helped put food on your table do two things. First, read Farm Hands(or read it anyway because it is truly a moving book). Next, sign up to “Take Their Job“. I bet 99 percent of you will stop complaining and begin working with ag producers to help address the farm labor issues.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be attending the Biodiversity World Tour stop in Ames, IA where our U.S. Secretary of Ag, Tom Vilsack, will be joining the conversation. The event will be streamed live online too. Just use the hashtag #BWT2010 and your tweets will appear in the auditorium for the audience, moderator, Secretary Vilsack, and panelists to see.
Iowa State University, CropLife International, CropLife America, and Truth about Trade and Technology have partnered together to bring together farmers from around the world to discuss what they are doing on a daily basis to preserve our planet and how they see these practices improving in the future. Featuring farmers from North America, Asia, and South America, the panel will discuss the role of sustainable agriculture practices in protecting biodiversity. In addition, taking questions from the audience and interacting with the panel will also be United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
This event is on the agenda of the Truth About Trade and Technology, Global Farmer To Farmer Roundtable, which I’m participating in courtesy of the National Corn Growers Association, one of the event’s sponsors.
Believing that farmers must work together on a global table to expand access to technology in agriculture to all, Truth About Trade & Technology (TATT) – an American based non-profit formed and led by farmers who support access to technology, including biotechnology, and freer trade – will host an Annual Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable.
So, keep an eye on AgWired for action from these events. They kind of tie into the Borlaug Dialogues and World Food Prize Symposium that take place in Des Moines this week too. I am not planning on attending them, but who knows? Schedules can change.
Let’s meet the President of Charleston|Orwig, Mark Gale. In this week’s program you’ll hear a conversation that Cindy had with Mark at the recent World Dairy Expo. Charleston|Orwig, along with several of their clients were sponsors of our coverage of the annual dairy extravaganza once again.
Mark told Cindy that the agency business has made some dramatic changes in the past few years with the advent of social media and he is proud that Charleston|Orwig has been on the forefront of using these new tools to communicate.
Mark is also one of the founding members of the AgChat Foundation, which is dedicated to helping farmers and ranchers use social media platforms to connect with each other and advocate for agriculture.
This week’s program ends with some fun music from Music Alley. It’s a song titled, “Chocolate Milk” by The Two Man Gentlemen Band. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.
Not a pickle. It’s a hedgeapple. We used to (incorrectly) call them hedge balls, and one year, I even used it for an elementary pumpkin-decorating contest and took first place. Maybe there is a creative bone in me somewhere.
Here are a few little-known facts about the Hedge tree: The hedge tree has several names, Osage Orange (most popular) and Bodark (French) and Maclura pomifera (scientific name). Not all of the Osage Orange trees will have fruit because hedge trees are either male or female. Osage Orange is a cousin to the mulberry tree.
The Osage Orange was one of the primary trees used in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Great Plains Shelterbelt” WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states, and by 1942 resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for 18,600 miles. The sharp-thorned trees were also planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire and afterward became an important source of fence posts. (Source: Wikipedia)
Today, the fruit is sometimes used to deter spiders, cockroaches, boxelder bugs, crickets and fleas. One of the guys working on our house told me to put it in my closet to keep away the bugs. I think I’ll toss it back along the side of the road where I found it, or maybe stick it in amongst the mix of pumpkins and gourds that decorate my kitchen island. I guess Osage Orange trees are most common in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, but I know this for a fact – someone must have transplanted a whole lot of them to southeast Nebraska because they’re everywhere. Gives kids something fun to find for a scavenger hunt.
American Farmland Trust has launched “Dine out for Farms” – a national, weeklong event (Oct. 10-16) that will bring together restaurants and consumers together across the country to support a sustainable future for America’s farms.
Bunge North America announced the opening of the Bunge Ingredient Innovation Center for Edible Oils & Carbohydrates in Bradley, Ill.
Kincannon & Reed announced the promotion of Jon Leafstedt to Managing Partner.
Both corn and soybean production for this year were cut in this month’s crop report out this morning from USDA. Corn production is forecast at 12.7 billion bushels, down 4 percent from the September forecast and down 3 percent from last year’s record production of 13.1 billion bushels. Soybean production is forecast at a record high 3.41 billion bushels, down 2 percent from September but 1 percent above last year.
The industry was expecting the corn forecast to be lowered, but it was the amount of the decrease that caught the industry by surprise, according to John Anderson, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.
“This is a pretty sizable drop in production,” Anderson said. “We saw a really big drop in USDA’s forecasted average yield for corn because of adverse weather in the big corn states of Illinois, Iowa and Indiana. USDA is forecasting a national average yield of 155.8 bushels per acre, compared to 162.5 bushels per acre in September’s report. A 6.7 bushel drop in yield is pretty significant.”
On the Minneapolis Grain Exchange monthly conference call featuring commentary on the USDA report, Peter Georgantones from ITS also expressed surprise at the new forecast, predicting it will lead to $6.00/bu corn, “pretty easily now.” Market reaction was definitely higher on Friday with December corn closing up 30 cents at $5.28 a bushel, the highest in over two years.
The latest supply-demand numbers reflecting the new forecast show a decrease in stocks, increase in feed use, decrease in exports and ethanol about the same. At a seminar in Chicago promoting exports of the ethanol by-product distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS), U.S. Grains Council President and CEO Tom Dorr was not too concerned about the report. “I’ve been a farmer most of my life and the thing that I know is that farmers more often than not, swim in surpluses, they love dealing with shortfalls and they’ll produce our way out of this very quickly,” Dorr said.
Increased use of corn for ethanol has created more than 30 million metric tons of DDGS, a high-value feed product for domestic and international livestock producers. Initial 2010 export projections of 6.2 million tons of DDGS will be surpassed this calendar year as the United States gears up to export approximately 8 million tons.
Listen to or download an interview that Chuck did with Dorr reacting to the report today: Tom Dorr Interview
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with one of the presenters produced by Paulsen Marketing.
The 2010 Trends in Agriculture conference wrapped up with a Washington update: what to expect in 2011. Jim Wiesemeyer, senior vice president of policy and trade issues for Informa Economics Inc.’s Washington office, says the next few years could be the beginning of a golden era for agriculture.
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with one of the presenters produced by Paulsen Marketing.
How do agrimarketing firms find and engage agriculture communities and consumers? Joseph Rueter, a partner in Curation Station in Minneapolis, shared his insights with the Trends in Agriculture conference.
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with panel participants produced by Paulsen Marketing.
The second day of NAMA’s Trends in Agriculture kicked off with a panel discussion on “Macro Food Trends.”
Dan Halstrom is the Senior Vice President of marketing and communication for the U.S. Meat Export Federation. He emphasized a focus on global trade is essential.
Carol Bagnoli heads the Consumer Insights Strategy group at General Mills. She said consumers are focusing on health issues, especially where their food comes from.
Rose Mitchell is the Senior Vice President of Governmental Relations for Hy-Vee. She sees tremendous growth in organic products.
Jim Compart is President of Compart Family Farms and also the President of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association. He sees over-regulation as a barrier to producers export opportunities.
In this week's program Chuck talks with David Armano, Global Innovation and Integration.
David conducted a presentation on delivering expert opinion via social media to an audience at the start of International Poultry Expo week. He's got some great information about who consumers trust and how you can use today's consumer behavior to help communicate your message.
World champion soybean grower Kip Cullers got a plaque from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and a crystal globe trophy from the Missouri Soybean Association for breaking the soybean yield record again. But, MachineryLink presented the “Crop King” with a more practical honor – an embroidered pair of his trademark overalls.
Todd Branson and Mark Gabrick were on hand at the Country Cupboard in Stark City, Missouri yesterday when the announcement was made that Kip broke his own yield record again, with 160.6 bushels per acre on his 2010 test fields. “We wanted to give him something he could actually use,” they said. 
“Agriculture is the backbone of Missouri’s economy, and growers like Kip Cullers are the reason why,” said Governor Nixon. “Missouri farmers feed, fuel and clothe the world, and they also create jobs, support local businesses and help our communities thrive. When it comes to soybeans, Kip Cullers continues to take the science to a whole new level, and his work is blazing new trails that will keep Missouri agriculture moving forward.” 
Soybean superstar Kip Cullers is going to officially announce his 2010 soybean yield results today at a press conference near his farm in Purdy, Missouri.
Let’s meet the President of 
Mark told Cindy that the agency business has made some dramatic changes in the past few years with the advent of social media and he is proud that Charleston|Orwig has been on the forefront of using these new tools to communicate. 
Both corn and soybean production for this year were cut in 
The latest 
In this week's program Chuck talks with David Armano, Global Innovation and Integration.
