I’ve heard so many stories from my husband about things he did when he was a little boy and I carefully remind him not to talk about them in my son’s presence for fear he’ll think it sounds like fun!
One such story involves an electric fence and a little boy’s small bladder. You can fill in the rest. However, my story doesn’t start out quite that way.
Last week, they trenched a water line from the well house to the horse fence so we didn’t have to drag three hoses out to give them water. The hydrant was leaning up against the electric fence, causing it to spark. So my husband pulled out his guns (a.k.a. muscles) and pulled the hydrant back far enough away from the fence to fix the problem.
With his solution came another problem for me – the faucet was too far away from the water trough so the water was spilling out over the edge. I gracefully pushed it forward just ¼ of an inch and then not-so-gracefully felt the electric shock on my hand. Needless to say, the fence is working! Boy did my fingernail on my right ring finger hurt for some time. I’m just glad it was me and not the hands of a 2-year-old.
I think I got two new gray hairs from the experience.
Kristina Harris Butts is the Executive Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). She sat down with me during the Cattle Industry Summer Conference to give me an update on a policy that hasn’t been so top of mind for policymakers these past few months due to their work on the budget. And that’s the 2012 Farm Bill. I asked her what some of the key points were for the cattle industry that need to be included in this bill.
During the meeting, NCBA put forth a Guidance Document that is the foundation of what the members would like NCBA to pursue in the Farm Bill. The Guidance Document doesn’t replace current policy but rather illustrates those priorities, explained Butts.
One key issue is maintaining the conservation programs that NCBA producers take part in. Like so many other programs, it has been cut. “We’re trying to figure out how we can maximize all these cost share programs where producers put in money and the government matches the dollars,” said Butts.
Another area that has been heavily debated is research. The research, says Butts, includes production research on animal diseases, production measures, genetics, and how we the producers can continue to use natural resources to produce the most amount of meat possible to not only feed our country but a growing world population.
Butts said there is a running joke that the Farm Bill is the nutrition bill since so much focus of the bill is on nutrition. But she says NCBA members support nutrition efforts and understand that beef is a healthy part of a diet and also believe that the USDA is the right agency for the programs being administered.
You can learn much more about the 2012 Farm Bill by listening to my interview with Kristina Harris Butts here: A Farm Bill for the Cattle Industry
This evening John Lagemann, John Deere Vice President, Sales & Marketing — United States/Canada/Australia/New Zealand for the Agriculture and Turf Division, welcomed us to the biggest product launch in the history of the company. The ag media along with a large crowd of dealers got a great show and then had the opportunity to take to the floor to get on the new equipment and talk with John Deere product representatives. The photo below is a new John Deere S660 Combine.
I visited with John immediately after the show. John says this is a “tremendously important introduction for us because it’s the culmination of a wide portfolio of products with integrated technology.” Connectivity was a key word during the presentation. John estimates that well over 6,000 people will participate in the product launch.
You can listen to my interview with John here: Interview with John Lagemann John Deere today completed the public unveiling of its new ag equipment for 2012 as part of the largest, most significant product introduction in the company’s 174-year history. Significant improvements in power, comfort, and performance are the hallmarks of the new machines including the S-Series Combines with larger corn heads and platforms; high-horsepower 4WD and track 9R/9RT Tractors; 6R Series row-crop tractors and 5 Series utility and specialty tractors.
According to Barry Nelson, manager of media relations for John Deere Ag and Turf Division, these products greatly extend the company’s broad portfolio of equipment products for use in all types of farming, livestock and specialty crop operations, as well as for commercial and property maintenance businesses. “Across the board, we’ve increased the power and added many features to our new equipment that will make customers even more productive, wherever these machines are used,” Nelson says. “This is the strongest lineup of new ag products ever from John Deere.”
In addition to new John Deere combines, headers and tractors, the company recently introduced its new 7R Series Tractors for the row-crop market; its largest, most advanced self-propelled 4940 Sprayer with 1,200-gal. solution tank, 120-ft. booms, and advanced loading and application technologies; and revolutionary Triple-Mounted Mower-Conditioner that cuts a swath more than 28 feet wide.
We started our day out in the field with the new machines. I’ve recorded some video and other interviews from there that I’ll be posting over the coming days. But you can bet I got photos that are online! 2011 John Deere Product Launch Photo Album
It’s the largest product launch in the history of John Deere and that’s where I’m stopped on the agriblogging highway. We’re in Indianapolis to learn all about these new machines. Today the ag media got to see the new tractors and combines and get inside for some stick time. I’ll be posting photos, videos and interviews over the next couple days. Right now I’ve got to get ready to see the “big show” with the group.
The tractor in the picture is a new 6R Series that was on display.
For the row-crop tractor market, John Deere introduces the 6R Series Tractors for the 2012 season. The new 6R Series, which replaces the John Deere 7430 Premium and 7530 Premium models, includes three tractor models: the 6170R with 170 engine horsepower; the 6190R with 190 engine horsepower; and the 210 horsepower model 6210R.
According to Chris Borgman, John Deere product manager for mid-size tractors, the 6R Series Tractors have a higher horsepower range, increased hydraulic capacity, more integrated technology and larger ComfortView cabs than the previous 7030 Premium Series Tractors.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa on Wednesday. They are both pictured here with Dr. Phil Hayes of BIVI and Sioux Center Mayor Dennis Walstra at the symbolic ribbon cutting.
“The state is very proud to partner with a quality company like Boehringer Ingelheim,” said Governor Branstad. “We are an agricultural state and we’re proud to be an agricultural state. I was governor before back in the 80s when agriculture was going through what we called the farm crisis and agriculture was the weakest part of the economy – today it’s the strongest.”
I got to do a quick interview with the governor at the dedication where I also asked about his reaction to the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk trophy settlement – which he is pleased with.
We’re nearing fall farm show time. So where are you going? Here’s the results from our latest ZimmPoll. We asked, “Which of these fall farm shows will you attend?” 29% of you said Farm Progress Show, 16% said Husker Harvest Days, 11% said Farm Science Review, 10% said World Dairy Expo, 8% said Sunbelt Ag Expo, 15% said Regional/Local Show and 11% said More than one. The ZimmComm team will be at a number of these shows starting with next week’s Farm Progress Show. We’ll see you from there.
Our new ZimmPoll is now live. We’re asking the question, “What is your opinion on ag-related sponsorships of sporting events??” Your input and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.
In this week’s program we get a wrap-up of the AgChat Foundation’s Agvocacy 2.0 Conference. I spoke with Michele Payn-Knoper, founder of the weekly AgChat conversation on Twitter and an AgChat Foundation board member and also Amanda Sollman, who took on the project this summer of helping us put on the conference. Michele says we had 115 attendees which is more than double last year’s inaugural conference. Changes in this year’s conference included extended networking times and beginner and advanced sessions on different breakout topics.
Listen to my conversations with Michele and Amanda in this week’s ZimmCast: Agvocacy 2.0 Conference
While the conference was taking place, local news outlet, The Tennessean, had a crew come by and they did a story about what was going on that I thought you might enjoy. It’s titled, “Got a question about your food? Tweet your Farmer.”
Edible bean growers can now experience fast, complete desiccation and improved harvest efficiency with Sharpen herbicide, powered by Kixor herbicide technology.
The National Sorghum Producers board of directors elected new officers and appointed three new individuals to the board.
The Iowa Cy-Hawk trophy trash-talking got to be too much for the two college teams to take when people were dissing the corn growers.
At a press conference on Tuesday announcing that the controversial corn-themed trophy will get a do-over, representatives from both the University of Iowa and Iowa State spoke up in defense of the Iowa Corn Growers, who had been taking the brunt of the heat from upset fans and the media. “Iowa Corn has shouldered most of the burden of the criticism … That story is not being told correctly,” said Iowa associate athletic director Rick Klatt, adding that Iowa corn represents “more than 6500 Iowans who help feed the world and share our commitment to hard work, dedication, determination and team work.” Steve Malchow of ISU noted that “Iowa Corn didn’t ask to change the trophy when they signed on.”
Iowa Corn CEO Craig Floss said the trophy will be re-designed with input from the fans. “When we signed on as a sponsor of the Cy-Hawk Series earlier this year, we did so because we know how passionate people are about this rivalry. We wanted to be part of that passion,” he said. “We heard loud and clear that people want a different trophy for the football game. A new Cy-Hawk football trophy will truly be the fans’ trophy.”
What will happen to the trophy featuring a farm family celebrating their harvest has yet to be decided, but Craig says it definitely “won’t be on the sidelines” at the upcoming Iowa-Iowa State football game on September 10. An interim trophy will be awarded at that game as the new one is being developed.
The AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference may be over but I have more interviews to share. I’m on the agriblogging highway to another event so it will be several days before I can get them all posted. In the meantime I’ve got plenty of photos to share.
Here’s the full group at the conclusion to the conference this afternoon. There are almost 200 photos in my photo album. Are you in there? We’re going to do it again next year so I hope to see you there.
Matt Teagarden is a rancher from Topeka, Kansas whose family has been in the business of cattle for at least four generations. During the Cattle Industry Summer Conference, he said he was closely watching the language around the mandatory COOL program. He explained there is a confidential trade ruling from the World Trade Organization indicating that Mexico and Canada are justified in their claim that our mandatory COOL program violates our trade agreements.
“So we’ve tried to be proactive in fixing the issue so its compliant. Canada and Mexico our are two biggest trading partners for beef,” he said.
Also on his radar and what he sees as the biggest challenge for the industry is the continuing decline of the cow herd. There are many factors causing this but one has been long-term drought in many states. “Even if the weather was right there are factors that are challenging us from growing our cow herd,” said Teagarden. “Our cow-calf producers are getting older so we need to identify the next generation of cow-calf producers.”
On the opposite side, Teagarden said if they can get the right conditions they have the opportunity to expand. “In the states I think we have the opportunity to grow beef demand and total beef consumption. As you look around the world and the global economy rebounds after the recession, the opportunities are tremendous.”
At the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference I met Twitter follower and now friend in person. Here’s @DairyCarrie Mess and her husband.
You’ll notice that Carrie is wearing a New Holland shirt! That’s because the dealership she works at sponsored her participation in the conference. I talked with Carrie to learn what drew her to AgChat and using social media. I think you’ll enjoy hearing her story and it will encourage farmers to get started with social media if they haven’t already. As she puts it “If you are serious about being in agriculture you need to consider this as part of your job.”
Just because you couldn’t make it to the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with the community. Take the Dairy Goddess who couldn’t be here. She passed along a video link to share around and I found it via the conference Facebook page. It’s a great video and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Here’s what the producer has to say about why he made the video:
So after watching a video a friend made about his “chicks” on his chicken farm(linked below). My friend Marcelo Alves and I decided we could not only make a similar video about my dairy farm but do it even bigger and better. So we decided to try and make a full on music video, and this video is the result.
Don Pemberton is a rancher from Hopkinsville, KY. His family business has been in operation for 40 years, and he is a long-time National Cattlemen’s Beef Association member who feels it’s important to have an association that “has your back” so to speak. He was recently elected as Vice Chair of the Policy Division, and the big joke during the Cattle Summer Industry Conference was that Pemberton is “Policy all the time.”
One main issue, he said, are the regulations coming out of the EPA. He said we’ve seen an overzealous administration that is really making it difficult to do business. “There is some talk in Washington that they will repeal some of these regulations. I hope they’re thinking about how they’re affecting the small business owner such as ranchers and farmers across this nation,” said Pemberton.
I asked him why he thought such harmful regulations were being passed. While he said he was not really in a position to answer that question, he did note that three generations ago most people knew someone who was involved in agriculture. Today, most people are two generations removed from the farm. The industry is now such a small percentage that they really have to work hard to make their voices heard, he explained. And they need to be heard, said Pemberton, because they need the opportunity to grow the food, feed and fiber the world needs.
In closing he stressed that it is important for more members of the cattle industry to join an organization that is dedicated to helping them succeed. He invited those interested to visit their new website, www.beefusa.org.
At the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance presented some research with consumers that was conducted by Maslansky, Luntz + Partners. On our program was Jenn Dahm (pictured left). Jenn says that “the finding that all of our research hinges on is the fact that America loves farmers and ranchers. All the effort we’re putting in to showing our families and our values and what we do in those terms, it’s good, and it helps and you know that battle is already won and the place where we really need to focus our energy if we’re going to be effective is talking about our methods.” This is the area where consumers have questions.
She says that fighting back is not working. Throwing facts at them is not working. Inviting consumers to the table is working better. “It’s not a war, it’s about starting a conversation.”
All roads lead to Colorado. Cattle producer Terry Fankhauser is a Kansas native but moved to Colorado about 11 years ago. He comes from a multi-generation ranch, but it was only big enough for the family that was there so Fankhauser said his dad had the foresite to tell him to go find something else. And that he did in Colorado – another ranch.
Like his counter part in Idaho, Charles Lyons, Colorado is a public lands state so that means they graze their cattle on a lot of public land. During the Cattle Industry Summer Conference, Fankhauser said he was glad to see that the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) grouped up a lot of the private property, environment and federal lands committee discussions to really talk about endangered species issues, property ownership, leasing, and environmental challenges. In addition, the organization discussed in detail how these elements mix among land uses and production types.
“There’s a few good policies in there but it was more about the conversation on how we can bring our membership closer together and work across industry segments more effectively on those types of policies,” said Fankhauser.
So what does he believe to be one of the greatest challenges facing his business? Like so many others, he feels current regulations have over-reached.
“The biggest challenges we’re seeing are the current environmental regulations that are coming out of the administration that we believe are misguided,” said Fankhauser. “We think that agriculture is part of the solution, not part of the problem and I know we have the data, and the information and the talent to back that up.”
P.T. Barnum has been quoted as saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but those in the agriculture industry might disagree with that at times.
The vicious backlash over the Iowa Cy-Hawk series football trophy, sponsored by Iowa’s corn growers, might be one of those times – or it might not. The trophy shows an Iowa family together after a day on the farm, the farmer husband kneeling before his wife and children with a bushel of corn between them. It was designed by the Iowa Corn Growers to represent “the people and characteristics that are uniquely Iowan.”
It was immediately and almost universally condemned as the “worst trophy in sports.” Trophy chatter Twitter and Facebook just intensified over the weekend and once Governor Branstad commented Monday that he thought they “could do better” it was obvious that something had to be done. Iowa Corn representatives along with University of Iowa and Iowa State University officials will be holding a press conference Tuesday at 2 pm central in Johnston to talk about the situation and it is likely that some kind of modifications to the trophy, if not a complete redesign, will be announced.
Most of the criticism is based on the fact that the trophy has no football on it. Some of the comments have been humorous and some have been mean, but many of the sports writers seemed to be careful to point out they were not anti-farmer, like The Gazette in Cedar Rapids – “Yes, we are corn. Yes, we are farmers. And thank the heavens we are. Many of our families have lived it and we continue to live it every day in our state. We celebrate that every day. The Cy-Hawk Trophy should be about football, the game and the players.”
The question is whether this publicity will ultimately be positive or negative, because the whole purpose of the corn growers sponsorship of this high profile state rivalry is to remind Iowans about the importance of farming and corn. Had this been your basic sports trophy with maybe a football on top of a bushel of corn, the story would have gotten some state coverage and mentions in the college sports media. Instead, it literally went viral. I’m sure someone can calculate the number of mentions of this trophy in traditional and social media and it has to already be huge, and it will continue to have legs for some time as the college football season gets underway.
There have been positive comments about the trophy, like this one on the Iowa Corn Facebook page – “This will turn out to be a HUGE WIN for Iowa Corn and the CyHawk series.” It could very well happen.
The final session of the US Soybean Export Council Animal Utilization Stakeholders meeting in Seattle this past weekend focused on a discussion of new ideas to promote soybean exports in the future.
As chairman of the United Soybean Board International Marketing Committee, Jim Call of Minnesota split his time between the animal utilization and the human utilization meetings. “I think we covered a lot of areas. I think it gives our staff a little more direction on the projects they need to bring forward to the farmers in the future that we as farmers think will add value,” he said.
The last panel at the animal utilization meeting discussed ways that animo acid profiles could be used as a marketing characteristic. “Currently the market focuses on protein and oil,” Jim explained. “What we’re trying to do is get the market to focus instead of just on protein, on amino acid or digestibility.”
All of the attendees at the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference are going home with logo shirts thanks to the work of Drew Bender, agriculture education instructor in central Ohio. He’s one of the volunteers helping make the conference happen. Last year he was on the training committee and this year he’s continued his involvement putting on the second conference.
Drew says that after getting involved with the Tuesday evening AgChat Twitter conversations he got connected to more people and has really enjoyed meeting many of them. He thinks we’re making a difference and the growth in the conference is one indication of that.
Ryan Weeks is a 5th generation farmer from south-central Nebraska (pictured on left). He thinks that if farmers don’t use social media to tell their story someone will do it for them. He’s involved in the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 Conference. He got interested after starting on Twitter and attending last year’s conference. This year’s he’s serving on the training committee.
He thinks there are a lot of people having conversations online in agriculture but says we need to get outside our comfort zone to extend that conversation with more people who are not on the farm. Ryan says the conference here will talk about getting outside your community. He calls it “farming your online community.”
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.
I’ve heard so many stories from my husband about things he did when he was a little boy and I carefully remind him not to talk about them in my son’s presence for fear he’ll think it sounds like fun! 
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new 
In this week’s program we get a wrap-up of the AgChat Foundation’s Agvocacy 2.0 Conference. I spoke with 
At a 
It was immediately and almost universally condemned as the “worst trophy in sports.” Trophy chatter Twitter and Facebook just intensified over the weekend and once Governor Branstad commented Monday that he thought they “could do better” it was obvious that something had to be done. Iowa Corn representatives along with University of Iowa and Iowa State University officials will be holding a press conference Tuesday at 2 pm central in Johnston to talk about the situation and it is likely that some kind of modifications to the trophy, if not a complete redesign, will be announced.
The final session of the 
In this week's program Chuck talks with David Armano, Global Innovation and Integration.
