The third AG CONNECT Expo will be held January 29-31, 2013 at the Kansas City Convention Center, according to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), which started the global agribusiness trade show in 2010. The show is now on a biennial schedule synchronized with Agritechnica, the global agriculture trade show in Hanover, Germany, owned by the German Agricultural Society, DLG. The two global agriculture trade exhibitions – Agritechnica in Europe and AG CONNECT Expo in North America – coordinated timing of their show dates for the convenience of exhibitors and attendees with global business interests.
“Agriculture today is increasingly global, and AG CONNECT Expo is a global trade show offering industry professionals the best information and the best people possible, without boundaries,” said Tim Merrett with Deere & Company, who is serving as AG CONNECT Expo 2013 chair. “We have succeeded with this goal and will continue to provide a quality gathering place for sharing global agricultural ideas and management trends.”
Exhibit space sales for AG CONNECT Expo 2013 are now open, and deadline is September 15, 2011 to receive priority status with the first round of exhibit space assignments.
AG CONNECT Expo and AEM will be visiting with attendees at the 2011 AMS InfoExpo next week in New Orleans, so we will be sure to find out more there!
I took a look at what’s new with Ag Leader Technology with Mike Olson at the AG CONNECT Expo. Here’s Mike talking through precision applications and options during the show.
Mike says they just announced the addition of advanced seed tube monitoring to their displays. This allows farmers to take their Integra display and monitor singles and doubles in their spacing along with other things. This helps make sure you’re getting the best performance from your planter. Mike says farmers are most interested in auto steering since many haven’t implemented it yet and also planter clutch control which allows section control.
Looking ahead Mike says that he wants farmers to take a look at their OptRx crop sensor technology which allows for on the go variable nitrogen application. He says data they’ve seen from fields using this technology is amazing.
According to University of Illinois professor Dr. Fred Below, there are “Seven Wonders of the Corn Yield World,” and one of the most important is nitrogen.
Dr. Below developed the “Seven Wonders” as a tool to teach farmers the relative importance of management factors that can impact corn productivity, ranking the top seven factors that can positively impact corn yields. “In our quest to grow 300 bushels and to improve crop management, we need to know those management factors that have the biggest impact on yield and make sure we manage those correctly,” he told me during an interview at the AGROTAIN exhibit during AGCONNECT Expo.
Fred ranks weather and nitrogen as the top two corn yield world wonders. “These wonders interact with each other so that every single thing about nitrogen application and use by the plant is affected by weather,” he says. So, while farmers can’t control the weather, they can control nitrogen loss due to the weather. To that end, Dr. Below included SUPERU® (with AGROTAIN technology) as part of a high tech fertilizer package in his studies. “The AGROTAIN technology like SUPERU is designed to mitigate weather-induced nitrogen losses. This lets the plant respond to the nitrogen, rather than have it be lost,” he said. “So preventing nitrogen loss is number one on the list for achieving high yields.”
The other five “wonders” on Dr. Below’s list include: hybrid selection, previous crop, plant populations, tillage and chemicals.
Listen to my interview with Dr. Below here: Dr. Fred Below
I found out what’s new with AgWired sponsor, Leica Geosystems, at AG CONNECT Expo from Harlan Little, North American Business Manager – Agriculture. He says they’ve just announced a full suite of new products that include expanding the line of SteerDirect steering solutions and adding a number of new features to the Leica mojo3D and Leica mojoMINI displays.
Listen to Harlan explain each of these and what they offer to farmers who want to take advantage of the efficiencies offered by the latest precision products here: Interview With Harlan Little Leica’s SteerDirect Solutions
The new SteerDirect Hydraulic option is a compact, integrated solution designed to work with the Leica mojoRTK auto-steer console.
New Leica mojo3D
The new Leica mojo3D guidance display has been upgraded with a number of new features, including the new Ultimate Curve guidance option, Boundary Recording, and the ability to upgrade to GLONASS satellites.
New Leica mojoMINI
The Leica mojoMINI also has a number of new features, making this entry-level display a must-have for any farm operation. The Leica mojoMINI is a great solution for anyone looking for an affordable way to start saving money in the field by enhancing driver accuracy and reducing overlap. Plus, with new features like Boundary Recording, Coverage Mapping and Continue Field, the Leica mojoMINI is even more useful.
2010 was a big year for Alltech, what with hosting the FEI World Equestrian Games and all, but in 2050 the company is talking about having 9.3 billion people for dinner.
“Feeding the World – 9.3 billion people for dinner in 2050″ is the theme of Alltech’s lecture tour this year that kicked off during AG CONNECT Expo on Saturday. Dr. Mark Lyons, International Project Director for Alltech, says AG CONNECT was a great place for them to start. “We have operations in 90 countries, we’re selling into almost 120 countries,” Mark said. “So for us, it’s an excellent venue. Having a stop in Georgia is one thing, having a stop here at this event is much different.”
Now the lecture tour moves on to stops along the eastern part of the U.S. and then the western part. “We’ll have 23 stops in North America and over 100 stops globally,” Mark said. “It culminates in our symposium in May in Kentucky. It’s a very important part of what we do. We estimate that we get in front of about 20,000 people a year.” There were several hundred at the event in Atlanta.
At the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting I got an update on how things are going with the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance from General Manager Hugh Whaley. He’s seen here in their booth out on the trade show floor.
Hugh says they now have 23 national and regional organizations that have joined in the alliance with an eleven member board. They just added a board member from the National Milk Producers Federation. Of course, the Chairman is Bob Stallman, President of AFBF! Now that the organizational structure is in place Hugh says the next step is to select or identify a company with a proven track record of creating opinion changes with the general public. He says they are also talking with and open to more organizations joining in and the board just approved a strategy to involve agribusinesses as well. They’ve received proposals from 4 firms to become their legal counsel and hope to have a selection made soon.
AG CONNECT Expo is modeling itself after the highly successful AgriTechnica which is held biennially in Germany. That show is run by DLG, the German Agriculture Society with 22,000 members. The managing director is Dr. Jochen Kockler, seen here being interviewed after a press conference. I joined Southeast AgNet’s Randall Weisman in an interview about DLG. Randall asked good questions so I saw no need to jump in.
Dr. Kockler says 66% of their members are farmers and they are completely independent of subsidies, depending on revenue from projects they work on. Their mission is “progress for farming.” He says the AgriTechnica has 2,500 exhibitors. That’s big! In comparison he says AgriTechnica is about 10 times bigger than AG CONNECT in terms of physical size but about the same in terms of educational sessions and content.
When you’re in Georgia at a farm show you know you’re going to be talking peanuts. That’s what I did with Don Koehler, Georgia Peanut Commission, pictured with Donna Rocker. We not only talked peanuts we sampled some. Don says that during the trade show in the AFBF Pavilion at the AG CONNECT Expo they made and served 350 waffles that were served with a peanut/maple sauce and chopped nuts, 150 pounds of fried peanuts served with different seasonings and 700 peanut butter/chocolate covered cherries.
Don says he wanted the farmers attending the show that were here from all over the world to know how good and healthy peanuts are for them. He says peanut butter is more than just a “bread spread.” He also told me that the 2010 season had about every kind of weather condition possible but wound up with a pretty good crop and they expect better weather in 2011.
An exhibitor at AG CONNECT Expo that you may not expect to see is Cabela’s. Handling the duties was Gene Catrambone, National Sales Manager. Gene says that a major portion of Cabela’s business comes from business to business sales, especially in the ag sector. They supply products directly to farmers but also to major agribusinesses. They offer tools for incentive programs and gifts to promote brands. As he puts it, they can put a logo on just about any product. They have over 200,000 of them! Approximately 80 percent of their ag customers are represented at the show. Now we know why they are there.
The chairman of the management committee for AG CONNECT Expo is Martin Richenhagen, AGCO President/CEO. I spoke with him about this year’s show which is now winding down to its last hour.
Martin said that one of the differences for this show from last year was having a lot more visitors and he credits having other organizations holding their meetings at the same time with helping. He says the location was very desirable for exhibitors. They use the show to hold their own meetings with dealers and customers. He says they want the show to attract big growers who are looking to invest. He also makes a point about how the show is put on by a non-profit organization, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. Martin also talks about the relationship with AgriTechnica, the largest European show, and says they have even invested in AG CONNECT Expo. Beginning now the two shows will run in off set years.
I have several more interviews to post from AG CONNECT Expo but am transitioning over to the AFBF Annual Meeting so I’ll see you from there. Our show photo album is now complete. I hope you enjoy them.
The 2011 AG CONNECT Expo is winding down but that doesn’t mean our coverage has ended. I’ve just updated our photo album with today’s photos.
Cindy and I have more stories that we’ll be posting over the next several days. I’m heading over to the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting. They’ve got another general session starting real soon. See you from there.
What do consumers think about food? Betsy Freese, Living The Country Life, told AG CONNECT Expo attendees about the results of recent survey results from the Better Homes & Gardens magazine editors. They mainly focused on women readers and their food habits in the last two year.
Betsy says that between 2008 to 2010 they found that the economy had an impact but that they’re still interested in organic and locally grown food although their use of those foods hadn’t really increased during this time. The economy is probably the reason as they are making fewer trips to the grocery store. They also looked at what types of meat they were consuming and found that beef and pork were stable while chicken had declined very slightly. Fresh fruit and vegetable use went down also probably due to the economy. There was a whole part of the study on food safety. In the past two years food safety confidence was steady although it had declined in the time period before this survey. She says the local food movement seems to have hit a plateau in the last couple years. She says that there is a lot that farmers can take away from the study. She thinks it is very important that farmers don’t try so hard to segment what kind of farmer they are, as in organic vs. non-organic and try to work together more.
One very well attended education session at AG CONNECT Expo was on “Smartphone Technology: Unleashing Agriculture.” The presenter was Neil Mylet, Loadout Technologies. He started his company right after graduating Purdue to develop intelligent smartphone technologies to allow phones to command and control and be part of industrial processes such as grain handling.
Neil was encouraged by the turnout at his session and he hopes they left better able to assess how they can better integrate mobile smartphone technology into their operation. He thinks mobile technology is still in a growth mode but will change how we communicate and work within the industry. The ag industry is no different than others that are being transformed by new technology. He says wifi is also essential on farms to take full advantage of these technologies. He also believes farmer adoption of smartphones is just a matter of time.
The staff at the Atlanta Convention Center was out shoveling snow early today. That’s something they don’t do very often but it was sure needed. The final day of the 2011 AG CONNECT Expo is here and the show will open for business at 9am. All educational sessions are taking place too. A lot of things got canceled in Atlanta but here, the show goes on. The roads are pretty well covered with snow and now freezing rain has moved in. It was crunchy walk over but not too bad.
The American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting is also in full swing after this morning’s Foundation Flapjack Fundraiser. I did not get to that breakfast but enjoyed one in the AFBF Media Room area with several other reporters. I’m back to the AG CONNECT Expo media room now and getting ready to do some posts and more interviews on the floor. Cindy will be working over at AFBF until I transition over there later today.
Korea’s ambassador to the United States is optimistic that Congress will pass the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement when it is submitted by the president.
Han Duk-soo spoke at a town hall forum sponsored by American Farm Bureau during the Ag Connect Expo on Saturday and then held a press conference, accompanied by AFBF’s Congressional Relations Director Chris Garza. “The momentum is very high now, I would say there’s no objections from US industry,” Han said during the press conference. “President Obama is very strong on passing this agreement, so I think it will be submitted to congress by the administration soon and if it is submitted, I think Congress should act within 60 days.” His hope is that it will be finished by the end of June.
Han sees no downside to the agreement for U.S. agriculture. “The beneficial impacts on the part of US exporters of agricultural products into Korea is huge,” he said. “It’s 100 percent beneficial to the US agricultural sector.”
Listen to or download Han’s press conference comments here (questions are not all audible): Han Duk-soo
This morning the media got an update on AG CONNECT Expo with some statistics you’ll find interesting. Pictured are (l-r), Dennis Slater, President, AEM, Martin Richenhagen, President/CEO, AGCO and Chairman of the show management committee, Charlie O-Brien, VP Ag Sector, AEM and Sara Truesdale Mooney, Show Director.
There are 12,000 AG CONNECT Expo and AFBF registrants with more than 60 countries represented outside the U.S. By comparison, the first Expo had 7,700 registrants. There are 382 exhibitors covering 174,500 square feet of space in the trade show that includes the AFBF Pavilion. There are pavilions in the show from Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Italy. The first show had 312 exhibitors. So the show is growing and will now move to a rotation of every other year. The next show will be held back in Orlando, FL, site of the first one.
American agriculture has a great story to tell of increasing productivity while at the same time decreasing its environmental footprint.
The first of the Town Hall Forums held Saturday at AG CONNECT Expo in the Successful Farming Innovations Theater was “The Shrinking Environmental Footprint of Agriculture” which was moderated by former National Resources Conservation Service chief Bruce Knight, a third-generation rancher, farmer and conservationist from South Dakota. He says he’s amazed by the progress in agriculture just in his lifetime is amazing. “I think about my own father coming home from World War II and still using horses to put up hay. I got started using 16 foot equipment. Now we’re using GPS guidance systems. It is an incredible adventure for all of us in agriculture.”
Two excellent presenters provided some good information for people in agriculture to know and share about how American farmers and ranchers continue to produce more food while using less natural resources. Karen Scanlon, executive director of the Conservation Technology Information Center, talked about advancements in row crop production. “It’s fortifying for farmers and those who support farmers to recognize that there have been impressive achievements in the last few decades and it’s also encouragement that we can continue to do more.”
Dr. Jude Capper of Washington State University, a livestock carbon footprint expert, talked about the importance of looking at the footprint in terms of the production, not the animal. “Compared to 1944, now we have bigger cows, they eat more feed, but they also give more milk, so milk yield per cow has increase four fold since 1944,” she explains. “We’ve cut cow numbers by 60 percent, but we also make 59 percent more milk, so that cut the total carbon footprint per gallon of milk, which is huge.”
I interviewed Bruce, Karen and Jude about conservation, carbon footprints and sustainability which you can listen to or download – or both!
Listen to my interview with Bruce here: Bruce Knight
Listen to my interview with Karen here: Karen Scanlon
The AgChat Foundation held an agvocate training session this afternoon. We’re building an army of agricultural advocates one crop at a time! I had the honor and pleasure to be a presenter and finally meet some of my fellow board members in person.
Here are (l-r), Ray Prock, Jeff Fowle and Nate Taylor. They each took turns talking about Twitter and then answered questions. Our session today covered the importance of social media, technology/tools, Twitter and Facebook after which participants broke up into groups. I hope we’ll see more of these at various events throughout the country during the year. I’m working on one to take place at the Western Farm Show in Kansas City, MO next month. More on that later.
Photos have been updated in our AG CONNECT Expo photo album and Cindy and I have a lot more stories to come as the show rolls on and we transition over to the American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting which gets into full swing tomorrow morning with the opening general session.
This morning at AG CONNECT Expo the first session was the Ag Executive Forum. The keynote speaker for breakfast was Thomas Cunningham, Economist and Associate Research Director, Federal Reserve of Atlanta. Thanks to Mary Thompson, Farm Foundation, for taking a photo of us in the hallway during my interview with him.
According to Thomas the economy is recovering but at a very slow pace. I asked him if there was room for optimism and he said it was more like “less room for pessimism.” He says that things are pretty good for the ag sector of the economy. With people around the world building wealth they’re spending more on food. As he put it, “It doesn’t look too bad right now.” and “The world is getting wealthier and as it does that it is changing its diet.” He doesn’t see this trend reversing. I thought he made an interesting observation that in talking with ag groups they “have a good sense of history.” So the bottom line is that the ag sector is relatively healthy compared to the rest of the economy but we should keep in mind that the world has changed, mostly for the better, and make financial decisions accordingly.
The winners of the AG CONNECT Expo 2011 “Advocating for Agriculture” awards were honored at the “Celebration of Agriculture” and opening ceremony for the show on Friday evening. These awards recognize those who support “in a compelling way the work of farmers and ranchers to provide abundant and affordable food and fiber.” Online voting by the Ag community helped select the winners, and more than 12,500 votes were cast for the nine finalists.
The winners from left to right are: Next Generation of Ag Award — Elliott Marsh from Statesboro, Georgia Ag Woman of the Year — Beverly Hall from Baxter, Tennessee Community Advocate Award — Ray Bowman from Frankfurt, Kentucky
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
Chuck and Mike often wind up at the same events all over the country so it seemed like a good idea to do a little AgriTalking about the changes they've seen in the ag media landscape.
The third AG CONNECT Expo will be held January 29-31, 2013 at the Kansas City Convention Center, according to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), which started the global agribusiness trade show in 2010. The show is now on a biennial schedule synchronized with Agritechnica, the global agriculture trade show in Hanover, Germany, owned by the German Agricultural Society, DLG. The two global agriculture trade exhibitions – Agritechnica in Europe and AG CONNECT Expo in North America – coordinated timing of their show dates for the convenience of exhibitors and attendees with global business interests.
I took a look at what’s new with 
According to University of Illinois professor Dr. Fred Below, there are “Seven Wonders of the Corn Yield World,” and one of the most important is nitrogen. 
I found out what’s new with AgWired sponsor, 
“Feeding the World – 9.3 billion people for dinner in 2050″ is the theme of 
At the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting I got an update on how things are going with the 
AG CONNECT Expo is modeling itself after the highly successful 
When you’re in Georgia at a farm show you know you’re going to be talking peanuts. That’s what I did with Don Koehler, 
An exhibitor at AG CONNECT Expo that you may not expect to see is 
The chairman of the management committee for AG CONNECT Expo is Martin Richenhagen, AGCO President/CEO. I spoke with him about this year’s show which is now winding down to its last hour.
The 2011 
What do consumers think about food? Betsy Freese, 
One very well attended education session at 
The staff at the Atlanta Convention Center was out shoveling snow early today. That’s something they don’t do very often but it was sure needed. The final day of the 2011 AG CONNECT Expo is here and the show will open for business at 9am. All educational sessions are taking place too. A lot of things got canceled in Atlanta but here, the show goes on. The roads are pretty well covered with snow and now freezing rain has moved in. It was crunchy walk over but not too bad.
Korea’s ambassador to the United States is optimistic that Congress will pass the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement when it is submitted by the president.
This morning the media got an update on AG CONNECT Expo with some statistics you’ll find interesting. Pictured are (l-r), Dennis Slater, President, AEM, Martin Richenhagen, President/CEO, AGCO and Chairman of the show management committee, Charlie O-Brien, VP Ag Sector, AEM and Sara Truesdale Mooney, Show Director. 
American agriculture has a great story to tell of increasing productivity while at the same time decreasing its environmental footprint.
The 
This morning at AG CONNECT Expo the first session was the Ag Executive Forum. The keynote speaker for breakfast was Thomas Cunningham, Economist and Associate Research Director, 
The winners of the 
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
