I think we had a great crowd for the opening ceremony of the first ever AG CONNECT Expo. The Chapin Theater here at the Convention Center is a beautiful facility.
Our emcee for the program was Doug DeVries, John Deere. He welcomed everyone and introduced two of his competitors, Martin Richenhagen, AGCO and Jim Walker, Case IH who also made welcoming remarks. I recorded their remarks which you can listen to and download below:
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Attending today’s Agrievolution program is Martin Richenhagen, President/CEO, AGCO. I had the opportunity to talk with him about this new ag show – AG CONNECT Expo. AGCO is supporting the show in a big way.
Martin says says that although the U.S. is one of the biggest countries in farming, the biggest farm shows are in Europe and they wanted to change that by having the industry association (AEM) put on the show so that the money made goes back into the industry. He says this gives companies a real vested interest in the show. In fact, he says “we feel pretty much like shareholders.” He really likes what the AEM staff has done with the show.
AGCO has invited about 1,500 dealers and customers to the show and they’ll have some new equipment on display. The idea has been very well received according to initial feedback.
AGCO is also sponsoring the first ever AGCO/AEM/AgChat tweetup following tomorrow’s opening session/reception at approximately 6pm in the news media center which is located in room W221 of the convention center.
You can listen to or download my interview with Martin below:
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AG CONNECT Expo now has an iPhone app available. Working with Core-Apps, LLC, and their Follow Me application, you can navigate the show floor like a pro. The app has interactive maps, lets you search the exhibitor directory or create your own schedule by choosing the sessions you want to attend and speakers you want to hear.
It’s on my phone even though it does cost $1.99. As we get closer to the show I’m sure there will be more data available. It’s got a download function that lets you download exhibitor handouts for example.
You can download the app via iTunes here.
I was surprised to see ads for AG CONNECT Expo showing up on FoxNews.com this morning. But we’re getting close to the first ever AEM ag show in Orlando, FL. Got your plans made? I made my plane reservation this morning.
Register Now
Advance Attendee Registration deadline has been extended!
Register to attend AG CONNECT Expo 2010 by Friday, January 8, 2010 and save over 30% on the onsite fee.
It seems like more and more meetings are being held in conjunction with the first ever AG CONNECT Expo. This invitation only event is called Agrievolution. The first one took place in Rome in 2008. Some portions of the program may become open to the public.
The Second World Summit on Agricultural Machinery will be hosted by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers on Monday & Tuesday, January 11 & 12, 2010 at the Waldorf Astoria, Orlando, Florida in conjunction with AG CONNECT Expo 2010. This second Summit will again identify challenges affecting the agriculture industry across the globe, and will provide a global platform from which to address issues impacting the industry. In addition to identifying crucial global agricultural and equipment manufacturing issues, the intent would be for the group to issue position statements and serve to coordinate collaborative efforts among the world regions for the betterment and advancement of the industry.
It’s Holiday Greeting time and the wishes are rolling in. Here’s the Association of Equipment Manufacturers saying Happy Holidays. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with them in January at their AG CONNECT Expo of which we’re a supporting organization.
Do you have a holiday greeting card you’d like to share with AgWired fans? If so, please send them to me and I’ll do my best to feature them here over the next few weeks. Please don’t hesitate to send if it mentions Christmas too. I and everyone I know are okay with that. After all, it’s the reason for the season.
January in Orlando is looking pretty good right now to most of us here in the frigid Midwest.
So if you have not made plans to attend AG Connect Expo 2010 in Orlando on January 13-15, take this snow day to get on line and make your reservations.
Besides offering the opportunity to get away to a warmer climate, Expo 2010 will provide a world-class event for the global agriculture industry—bringing together the latest in equipment, technology and ideas. The show was developed by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) with the support of a variety of industry organizations and companies, including Agwired and parent company ZimmComm New Media.
Find out more about what AG Connect offers from previous posts here on Agwired – including this interview with AEM’s Charlie O’Brien, and one with expo director Sara Mooney about the show’s awards program.
Sara Mooney is the Director of the AG CONNECT Expo and attended the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Trade Talk along with my man Rich Jefferson. I had been wanting to talk to them about their Advocating For Agriculture awards program where they will recognize three individuals who support “in a compelling way the work of farmers and ranchers to provide abundant and affordable food and fiber.” There are three categories: Ag Woman of the Year, Community Leadership and Ag Innovation.
The grand prize winner of each of the three award categories will receive a free trip to AG CONNECT Expo 2010, including roundtrip airfare for two to Orlando, Florida, from anywhere in the continental U.S. Nominations are due by the end of this week, November 28. Then online voting will start on December 4. All winners will be announced on December 18 and I’m sure we’ll have them posted here.
“AG CONNECT Expo’s awards are a way for our trade show to put a spotlight on the significant contributions that those in production agriculture make to our quality of life,” said Sara Mooney, the Director of AG CONNECT Expo. “We want the awards to draw attention to those whose work and accomplishments this year exemplify ‘advocating for agriculture.’”
You can listen to my interview with Sara below and read more about the awards by clicking on the “more” link. Continue reading
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It seems like the list of companies and organizations that are partnering and participating in the new AG CONNECT Expo continues to grow. This time AEM has announced an alliance with Farm Journal Media to promote the new show
Under this agreement, Farm Journal Media will represent AEM in exhibit booth sales outside of AEM and FEMA membership, publish the Official AG CONNECT Show Directory, hold seminars and co-locate events at AG CONNECT, and promote attendance to AG CONNECT with a full multimedia promotion schedule using Farm Journal Media’s definitive suite of media products.
The inaugural AG CONNECT Expo 2010 is slated for January 13-15, 2010 (Preview Day January 12 by special admission) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. AEM initiated AG CONNECT Expo as a North American-based global showcase of the latest innovations, products, services and technology in all agricultural sectors, with extensive networking opportunities and access to leading worldwide industry experts.
As Official Sponsor of AG CONNECT Expo 2010, Farm Journal Media is promoting the trade show to the agricultural community with an extensive multimedia program. Farm Journal Media will also contribute its expertise in major education events and networking programs.
This includes Farm Journal Media’s “Leave a Legacy” project, forming the basis for a show Plan for Success Workshop to be held in conjunction with AG CONNECT Expo 2010. “Leave a Legacy” is a nationally recognized effort to provide family agriculture operations with expert succession planning – an essential process for continued production of abundant food, fuel and fiber at the necessary levels of high efficiency.
The organizers of two international agricultural shows have announced a formal alliance to coordinate show dates that will allow agriculture producers to attend a major international agriculture trade show each year.
The alliance is between DLG (German Agricultural Society), the organizer of the world’s largest agriculture machinery show Agritechnica, and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), organizer of the new agricultural trade show AG CONNECT Expo, scheduled for January 13-15, 2010 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Agritechnica is held on odd numbered years with the next show scheduled for November 10-14, 2009 at the Fairgrounds in Hanover, Germany.
Both Agritechnica and AG CONNECT Expo 2010 are organized with a focus on providing a world-class event with top value and the highest quality experience for registrants. The philosophy shared by the shows is to provide customers with the full agriculture trade show experience. For 120 years the DLG exhibition has highlighted technological advances favored by agriculture producers. AG CONNECT Expo 2010 has a parallel concept that will provide a global gathering place in the United States for agriculture producers, manufacturers and agribusinesses.
Support is growing for the new global agriculture trade show set to debut January 2010 in Orlando. AG CONNECT Expo 2010 made several announcements this week about support for the show.
For starters, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) will co-locate its annual Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference (AETC) with the new international agriculture exhibition. It will also conduct its annual AE50 “innovation” awards program at AG CONNECT and spotlight the AE50 winning products at the show.
The North American Equipment Dealers Association (NAEDA) joins a growing list of industry groups that have endorsed and will participate in the show. NAEDA will also serve as a major organizer of the AG CONNECT Expo “Preview Day” that will allow dealers and their customers to interact with key decision makers from manufacturers in attendance. That will be held on January 12, the day before the show officially gets underway. In addition, the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association announced their support of the show this week.
Last, but definitely not least, AG CONNECT Expo 2010 has been selected to be part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Buyer Program, which will help to recruit international attendees and encourage connections with exhibitors who sell to the global marketplace. This is a huge deal for the international show, according Charlie O’Brien, vice president of agricultural services with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) which owns and operates AG CONNECT Expo. “With the involvement of IBP, attendees and exhibitors at AG CONNECT Expo will benefit from potential trade leads and matchmaking opportunities, international insights into key ag issues, as well as the opportunity to learn different business practices in the context of a global agriculture trade show,” said O’Brien.
AG CONNECT Expo 2010 will be held January 13-15 at Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center. Registration officially starts June 1, but exhibit space sales are already up for grabs. Find out more here.
NAFB Trade Talk is a great way to get new information out to farm broadcasters and that is what the Association of Equipment Manufacturers did this year at the event, talking about the new AG CONNECT 2010 expo.
Charlie O’Brien, vice president of agricultural services for AEM, had the chance to talk about the progress being made on the new show, which will debut in Orlando January 13-15. Charlie says they are working with a number of groups now who want to be involved in the show and hold their annual meetings as part of the event. He is especially excited about the global aspect of the expo. “We have more and more products being exported around the world,” he says. “So it’s a sharing of information back and forth from around the world.”
Listen to my interview with Charlie here:
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The Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF) has been announced as a result of cooperation between the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).
The foundation is a manufacturer-led effort to advance global adoption of ISOBUS and electronics standards, which provide a means for greater electronic compatibility between equipment from different manufacturers. The initial focus is data communications between tractors and implements.
An industry wide, global approach for integration of complex electronic systems and software will improve machine functionality and efficiencies, for the benefit of agricultural equipment customers. Projects to achieve that integration can be accomplished faster and more efficiently because of AEM and VDMA funding and staffing of AEF.
Although there is no website for the new AEF you can find North American information on the AEM website.
It looks like this whole credit crunch issue is affecting agriculture according to some testimony on Capitol Hill today by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. You can watch a video of it here.
The Chair of AEM’s Small Enterprise Committee, Richard A. Brown, testified on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 before the House Committee on Small Business at 10 a.m. EST. Brown is the President and COO of Krause Corporation, based in Hutchinson, Kansas. The hearing is on “Creating Opportunities for Small Businesses in an Economic Recovery.”
In his prepared statement, Brown expressed his concerns to the committee for small businesses in the U.S. obtaining credit during the present economic crisis. As an example, Brown cited one business person from rural South Carolina who “had an operating line of credit with (a bank) that was secured by a stock portfolio, but with the unraveling of the market their line was frozen … Now (he) is spending most of his time trying to resolve the issue when he should be working to secure orders in this down market.”
Brown pointed out that the crisis is also now hitting agriculture. “The economic foundation for countless small businesses on thousands of Main Streets throughout the country is agriculture,” he said. “The tightening of the credit markets is coinciding with a rapid rise in the cost of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer, seed, chemicals and fuel.”
Here’s another excerpt from his testimony:
“We are now seeing farmers delay the purchase of these inputs from their “normal” pre-season purchasing patterns as they are having trouble accessing credit and are hesitant to pay such steep prices. The ripple effects of tightening credit markets at a time of increasing capital requirements for agriculture will lead to economic hardships for rural America. I can also say that I personally perceive a sense of anger among rural Americans about this situation. Generally speaking, they did not buy homes they could not afford or run up huge credit card debt, but now are forced to deal with the consequences of other people’s excesses and as a consequence are losing faith in the system.”
How many times have you been at a meeting and had to fill out some survey at the end giving your evaluation of how the meeting went and each individual presentation?
That would be everyone. And then the people who did the meeting have to get all those pieces of paper back and add up all the responses and take up a bunch of time trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Well, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers used a high tech method to get feedback immediately at last week’s AgExecutive forum with a cordless response system. Kind of like what they use on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to pick the $10,000 winner at the end, you know?
Besides using it to get feedback on the meeting, they also had some fun with it asking questions on different topics and getting immediate responses by percentage. Pretty cool.
See photos from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
Three commodity organization representatives attempted to answer the question on everyone’s mind right now regarding commodity trends – where are we headed?
Steve Censky of the American Soybean Association, Fred Stemme with the National Corn Growers Association and Alan Tracy of US Wheat Associates all made presentations and took questions from the audience at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers AgExecutive Forum last week in St. Louis.
Steve noted the importance of biotechnology in the soybean industry and the increase in global demand for soybeans. “Global demand since 1990 for soybeans has been rising at 2x that of corn and almost 4x that of wheat or rice,” Steve said. “That is because people around the world have been improving their diets, which means more oil in the diet and more meat, which is good for the soybean industry.”
Fred started off his presentation with a flawless report on closing futures prices – sounded as good or better than any farm broadcaster I know – making bad news sound good! His presentation focused on the increase in corn yields since 1944, which can allow them to meet the feed, food and fuel needs of the world. “Who would have imagined 60 years ago that today we could produce on the same number of acres, 85 million acres, nearly four fold the size of crop,” Fred noted. “We went from about 3 billion bushels to 13 billion bushels last year.”
There was a bit of good-natured competition between the three. Alan pointed out that wheat may be losing acres to corn and beans, but he likes to remind his two colleagues that “mine is the only product that is mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer.” He noted the increase in wheat production in the Black Sea area, such as Ukraine, and he showed a graph comparing the similarities in weather between that region and the Midwest, suggesting that we “teach the Russians to grow corn and soybeans.”
Lots of good stuff in their presentations, which you can listen to here:
I also interviewed Fred and Alan – listen to them here:
Fred Stemme
View and download photos from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
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A panel of six representatives from major farm equipment manufacturers took seats on a panel at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers AgExecutive Forum in St. Louis Thursday to discuss “The Next Generation of Ag Show” – AG CONNECT expo, scheduled for January 12-15, 2010 in Orlando.
The executives, from left to right, were Doug DeVries, Deere and Company; Doug Griffin, AGCO; John Koetz, Case IH; Rusty Fowler, Krone NA; Gary MacDonald, MacDon Industries; and Dick Brown, Krause Corp. They are all very excited and supportive of the new show which promises to be a “worldwide and world-class experience; bringing the world of agriculture together in one gathering place for the benefit of exhibitors, producers, government, media, and all key industry leaders.”
We heard some of Doug DeVries comments about AG CONNECT in an earlier post, but I also had the opportunity to visit one on one with three of the other execs on the panel who have all been involved in developing the event as part of the show committee.
John Koetz of Case IH says, “What’s different here is that it’s designed around what the producers have been asking for. They are looking for more than just seeing the machines, they are looking for what are going to be the solutions, they want to interact with each other and industry experts, both here in the United States and internationally.”
Listen to John’s interview here:
Gary MacDonald of MacDon, which is a family-owned manufacturer of harvest machinery based in Winnipeg, thinks AG CONNECT will be the biggest thing to hit the industry in many years because of its global nature. “Going back 20-25 years, our market was 80 percent Canadian and 20 percent US, today the breakdown is 35 percent Canada, 35 percent US and heading toward 30 percent outside North America. So the export market has grown tremendously.”
Listen to Gary’s interview here:
Dick Brown of Krause says the show is a vision that started about 15 years ago. “We realized that equipment is just one part of a farming system and we needed to bring all of the elements of the farming system together to have a world class event.” He says the show is patterned to some extent on Germany’s AgriTechnica, but even more diverse in terms of what it offers for producers.
Listen to Dick’s interview here:
You can also download the interviews for broadcast use with these links:
John Koetz
Gary MacDonald
Dick Brown
View and download photos from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
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Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain is causing quite a bit of concern among members of the agriculture and ethanol industries with his comments about farm programs and ethanol incentives. Last week in Missouri, McCain said, “My administration will reduce the price of food by eliminating the subsidies for ethanol and agricultural goods. These subsidies inflate the price of food, not only for Americans but for people in poverty across the world, and I propose to abolish them.”
During a question and answer period yesterday at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers AgExecutive Forum, I had the opportunity to ask Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer what he would say to Senator McCain about farm policy if he had the opportunity.
“What I would say to Senator McCain is this: ‘You’re flat out wrong about your agriculture policy,’” Schafer said bluntly, while noting that he needs to be careful what he says in the political arena. “I would say that both candidates leave a lot on the table to be desired for agricultural policy. I’d love to have the opportunity to get in there and say ‘this is the importance of agriculture in this economy’ and I don’t think either one of them are seeing it.”
Schafer hopes that Senator McCain gets some advisers who can help him see that “agriculture is the foundation of the economy and the strength of this country.”
Listen to Schafer’s comments here:
You can also download his comments with this link: Ed Schafer on McCain ag policy (mp3)
Download photos of Schafer and others from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
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Dr. Jay Lehr has the title of Science Director for an organization called The Heartland Institute, which is a national nonprofit research and education organization with the goal to “discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.”
He is also an entertaining and passionate speaker who believes in spreading the good news about agriculture to places that are far removed from the farm – like the streets of San Francisco. He spoke about the importance of being an advocate for agriculture to agribusiness corporate leaders meeting in St. Louis at the AEM AgExecutive forum Thursday.
“People don’t understand agriculture and they believe the myths that they hear. They don’t even understand what fertilizer is, they think that we are despoiling the land when in fact we’re the best environmental stewards,” Dr. Lehr said.
He encourages people in agriculture to be pro-active in talking about modern farming and he is particularly interested in promoting precision ag. “The average person thinks that farming today is the same as it was in his grandfather’s day and it’s changed dramatically – using global positioning systems, geographic information systems and variable rate technology, automatic steering – which allows us to reduce our inputs by being more accurate.”
Listen to an interview with Dr. Lehr here:
You can also download the 9:30 interview with this link: Dr. Jay Lehr interview (mp3)
Check out the Flickr Photo Album from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
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A preview of the new generation of ag show – AG CONNECT 2010 – was offered to ag executives meeting Thursday in St. Louis.
Sara Truesdale Mooney has the job of show manager for this ambitious new ag show being organized by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and she says they have taken a very deliberate approach in developing AG CONNECT.
“We conducted a lot of research with producers,” Sara told me. “And from that research we developed a number of event features that would be unique to AG CONNECT.”
Some of those features include networking, the ability to interact with product specialists and engineers about equipment and new products, more information about precision farming and new technology. Sara says they are really developing a one-stop shop ag show. “We’re going to be putting on a world class agribusiness event that is not just exhibits, not just an equipment show – it’s new products, innovations, technologies, services, inputs – everything you need for your business.”
All of the information about AG CONNECT is available on-line at agconnect.com.
Listen to an interview with Sara here:
You can also download the 8:00 interview with this link: Sara Truesdale interview on AG CONNECT 2010 (mp3)
Check out the Flickr Photo Album from the AEM AgExecutive Forum here.
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