This fine looking group of students from the University of Illinois are the ones responsible for most of the content on the AGMasters Conference blog this week. This group worked as a team to cover every one of the speakers at the event, including doing audio interviews. I was extremely impressed with their work!
The bloggers are (standing) Crop Science majors Ross Recker and Jared Roskamp. Seated are, left to right, Agricultural Communications major Alyssa Eade, Crop Sci major Caitlin Allen, and Ag Comm major Megan Ott.
They deserve a big round of applause for their great work. I expect to see every one of them working in the industry and making a name for themselves in the very near future. Thanks to all of you!
Here’s another report from the AGMasters Conference blog, this one written by University of Illinois Ag Comm major Alyssa Eade:
Although to many farmers across the Midwest it may seem that agriculture in the US is struggling, Murray Wise, CEO and Chairman of the Westchester Group, is enthusiastic about the future of agriculture. Wise spoke on the future for global agriculture and food production in the year 2010 and beyond, here at the AGMasters Conference. “There is no other country that does it like we do,” said Wise of agriculture in the United States. I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Wise more about his thoughts on global food production, ethanol and the future of the family farm. You can listen to my interview with Murray below.
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Since the students did such a great job of blogging the AGMasters Conference, I am just going to re-post a few of their posts here, instead of doing it myself. See photos from the conference on the AGMasters Photo Album
This one was written by Megan Ott and Jared Roskamp:
Participants from this year’s AGMasters Conference had the privilege to gain insight on the efforts in genetics and agronomy efforts to increase corn yields. Greg Luce from Pioneer Hybrids provided coming news on improvements in corn production. With a growing population and growing demand of food production, farmers have to realize they need to produce more on what land we already have. This provides a great demand and challenge for producers in agriculture to increase our yields to feed the world.
Luce stated “One of the most important things we can do as producers is to have the right products on the right acres to optimize our yields.” In order to raise optimum yields, producers are at the advantage of having the improved genetic selection for seed corn. With new technology developed including stress tolerant corn, higher populations can be planted as a result of this new development.
With a competitive seed market as we have today, companies are developing diverse products in order to keep up with the growing demand in the agriculture industry. Such genetic diversity is there to select superior hybrids that exhibit drought tolerance, high nitrogen efficiency and even disease and insect resistance.
Listen to or download the interview with Greg Luce below:
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I am working with a number of talented young student bloggers covering the AGMasters Conference at the University of Illinois and they are doing an awesome job of audio interviews and posting on the conference blog.
The bloggers include Crop Science majors Ross Recker (pictured interviewing Emerson Nafzinger) and Jared Roskamp. They have both done great interviews, first time ever! Also working hard are Ag Comm majors Megan Ott and Alyssa Eade. And doing triple duty blogging, tweeting and working the conference is Crop Sci major Caitlin Allen.
Please check out the conference blog and see the great work these young people are doing. They could be working for you someday (or you for them!)
See photos from the conference here on the AGMasters Photo Album
Listen to Ross’ interview with Dr. Nafzinger about the potential for 300 bushel corn here:
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The inaugural AGMasters Conference is underway at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and there is a good crowd on hand, despite the fact that many farmers around the state are still out harvesting corn. This event is a new format for a conference that has a 60 year history at the university. Once upon a time, it was called “Spray School” – but it has evolved into so much more.
I talked with one of the co-chairs, Mike Gray, an entomologist with the Department of Crop Sciences. Mike says the organizers of the conference decided to move to the beautiful new I Center this year and have it in December instead of January. “Who would have known with this late harvest that we would have some issues surface because of that,” he said.
They also decided to change the format to a general session the first day and a classroom setting with breakouts on the second day. Check out the AGMasters conference blog for full coverage.
Started a Flickr photo album here – and you can listen to or download my interview with Mike below.
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As Chuck heads out of the country, I am heading out to Champaign, Illinois today to cover the inaugural AGMasters Conference at the University of Illinois. I will be providing coverage here on Agwired and other ZimmComm sites, as well as on the AGMasters Conference blog – with the help of several ag comm and crop science students from the university whose profiles you can read on the blog now.
According to the organizers, “this year’s conference represents a significant transition from a rich history of conferences conducted over a 60 year-span to a new era. Those conferences included the Custom Spray Operators’ Training School, Illinois Agricultural Pesticides Conference, and the Crop Protection Technology Conference. Each of these conferences continues to leave us a lasting legacy of the commitment of the University of Illinois to our agricultural stakeholders and clientele.”
The two-day program is jam-packed with an array of presenters and session covering a variety topics important to agriculture, from the global perspective, to increasing yields, biotechnology, fertilizers and glyphosate resistance.
On-site registration for the event is still possible, and I would definitely encourage you to attend if you can. This conference promises to be a great one. But, if you can’t be there in person, we will be providing wall-to-wall coverage with photos, audio and more. Stay tuned!
In this week's program you can listen in to my conversation with Bill Howard, Fastline, about their new mobile game app, AgRacer.
