Rick Nelson is not just a farmer from Paxton, Illinois – he’s a Master Farmer – and as such, he is helping to cultivate other master farmers in the state.
I talked with Rick at the Farm Progress Show in the GROWMARK tent, since Rick is also Vice Chairman of GROWMARK, and we talked about the Cultivating Master Farmers program that GROWMARK helps to sponsor in Illinois. “In the Cultivating Master Farmers program, one of the Master Farmers who’ve been around for a while spend some time with young, up and coming farmer couples who are just getting started in their careers,” Rick explains.
The two year mentoring program pairs up young farmers with Master Farmers. “Part of what we try to do in that program is to allow them to ask the questions that are on their minds,” Rick says. That includes topics like technology, record keeping, marketing, estate planning and much more.
The Cultivating Master Farmers program is coordinated by Prairie Farmer magazine in Illinois. Young farmers have the opportunity to apply for the program in odd years, so the Class of 2013 is already started up, but those who will still be 35 or younger by the end of 2012 will have a chance to apply for the next class.
One of the many farmer leaders who stopped by the media tent at Farm Progress show was Steve Wellman, a soybean producer from Syracuse, Nebraska who is First Vice President of the American Soybean Association (ASA). I chatted with Steve about some of the issues on his mind these days.
At the top of the list is approval of biotech traits to help increase production to meet growing world demand. “When biotech traits were first introduced about 20 years ago, it took 18 months to get through the approval system here in the U.S. Now it takes four years,” Steve says. ASA and the National Corn Growers Association held a joint conference with other stakeholders the week after FPS to discuss actions the industry could take toward getting timely regulatory clearances for biotech traits and avoid trade disruptions.
The hot, dry summer has taken a toll on the corn crop, according to the latest USDA forecast.
The estimate for corn production this year is now 12.5 billion bushels, down 3 percent from the August forecast but still more than last year and would still be the third largest corn crop in history. Yields are expected to average just over 148 bushels/acre, however, the lowest in six years. Meanwhile, soybean production is forecast at 3.09 billion bushels, up 1 percent from August with yields expected to average 41.8 bushels per acre, up 0.4 bushel from last month. That’s still less than last year, but at least the crop is not suffering as much as corn from the heat.
World Soybean Yield Champion and Rock Star Kip Cullers describes his corn crop in southwest Missouri this year as “horrible at best.” His first 4,000 acres averaged just 23 bushels an acre.
However, Kip says his soybeans actually look pretty good. “Soybeans are a lot more forgiving. They bloom 75 days so basically you got 75 days to mess up and 75 days to redeem yourself.” Kip was on stage at the Pioneer tent at Farm Progress Show talking about his grand champion soybean yield strategies.
Shannon says the company manufactures all sorts of structural shapes like this building for their shared exhibit with Trellis Growing Systems. The focus at the Farm Progress Show was the ag market of course. He says the primary problem in the market is corrosion but the fiberglass material they use is impervious to it. Basically their products last a lifetime. And almost everything they produce is custom designed. This includes fertilizer storage, hog barns, poultry houses and more.
During the Farm Progress Show I stopped in at the “Seven Wonders of the Corn Yield World” and visited with Jeff Whetstine, AGROTAIN. The company worked with several others to put together a massive display of corn test plots that demonstrate the work of Dr. Fred Below which is aimed at finding out how much new high tech products can improve yield in corn. Jeff describes how they put the test plots together that are part of the exhibit and how they dealt with very challenging summer weather conditions. Jeff says Dr. Below has been able to show a 50 bushel yield difference between a grower’s standard practice and the “high tech package.”
Entrepreneurship is alive and well at Iowa State University. I visited with Michael Koenig at the Farm Progress Show about it. ScoutPro, a business started by 3 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences students at Iowa State University will be launching their first products: ScoutPro Lite™ Soybean and ScoutPro Lite™ Corn at the 2011 Farm Progress Show on Aug 30-31 and Sept. 1, in Decatur, IL.
Seniors Michael Koenig, Holden Nyhus and junior Stuart McCulloh founded the new venture, ScoutPro, a software applications development company, following their involvement in an entrepreneurship in agriculture course taught by Kevin Kimle, director of the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative at Iowa State University.
The company has developed a crop scouting app which eliminates the guess work in crop scouting, while increasing producer’s efficiency and profitability. Through systematic questions, the app narrows down pests to ensure a correct identification. Additionally, the app creates field specific crop scouting reports to help producers make better management decisions. The ScoutPro Lite™ apps are compatible on all smartphones, iPads or other tablet devices.
In addition to the app, producers will also be able to manage all scouting reports and gain access to aggregated pest data through their own private, secure website.
Pioneer Hi-Bred’s big announcement at the 2011 Farm Progress Show was a new program focused on evaluating innovative production practices on a local basis through a national network of agronomy trial managers (ATMs).
“The focus is really local,” says Curt Clausen, Pioneer agronomy sciences director. “It’s really about local crop management, innovation and knowledge.”
Pioneer is doubling the number of ATMs currently in the field to over 40 in the next three years. “This is the next level of service to our customers,” Curt said during the Pioneer press conference at FPS.
Listen to Curt’s press comments, introduced by Pioneer’s Jerry Harrington, here. Curt Clausen of Pioneer
One of the real live Pioneer ATMs out in the field is Jake Vossenkemper from the Decatur area, who says growers have hundreds of agronomy questions that they want answered. “They want to do the best job they can just like everyone else and our job is to step in and help them answer those questions,” Jake says.
Jake says Pioneer has been performing some specific experiments in certain regions, like an intensive soybean management experiment to look at factors that have been shown to consistently increase soybean yields. “Some of those factors include seed treatments, foliar applied pesticides and fungicides, as well as planting date,” he said.
Some of the high yielding innovators in the 2010 Illinois Soybean Yield Challenge were at the 2011 Farm Progress Show to talk about the program and what they learned.
The Shipman Elevator Team, sponsored by BASF, took first place in District 6 last year and also won the Novel Practices Award in the challenge funded by the Illinois soybean checkoff. Team member Dwayne Milner, pictured here with his BASF rep Kaleb Hellwig, says they are competing again this year to build on what they learned last season. “As a whole, we learned that we’ve got to manage soybeans, we’ve got to plant them early and we’ve got to manage more like corn,” Dwayne told me.
Teams of growers, working together in nine districts across Illinois, farm side-by-side plots using traditional techniques on one and innovative methods on the other. The common goals for all Challenge participants are to maximize soybean yields while producing valuable data that will benefit researchers and growers alike. The Shipman team averaged 85.3 bu/ac of the top five growers, which was the highest of all the district averages last year. “Everybody did a lot of different approaches, but our most common were seed treatments, planting early, fertility management, used Headline as our fungicide, used an insecticide on it and residual herbicides,” Dwayne says.
During the New Holland press conference at last week’s Farm Progress Show we learned what’s new. Abe Hughes, New Holland Agriculture Sales & Marketing Vice President introduced three members of the team to talk about their market segments and products. We heard from Ed Barry, New Holland Cash Crop Marketing Manager; Mike Cornman, New Holland Hay and Forage Segment Marketing Manager and John Elliott, New Holland, Director, Marketing NAR. Some of the items they discussed include:
New SuperFlex draper head specifically designed to match the high capacity of New Holland CR Series Twin Rotor® and CX8000 Series Super-Conventional combines.
Special limited edition of New Holland’s FR9000 Series, which we’re producing in 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary New Holland’s first self-propelled forage harvester.
Tier 4A engines with the addition of five new CR Series Twin Rotor® combines and three new CX8000 Series Super Conventional combines equipped with ECOBlue™ Selective Catalytic Reduction engine technology.
There were quite a few race cars mixed in with the tractors and combines this year at the 2011 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois.
In addition to the American Ethanol NASCAR Sprint Series car at the Growth Energy exhibit, over at the Illinois Corn Growers exhibit, the Illinois Family Farmers NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Kenny Wallace was signing autographs and doing interviews.
Kenny said he was “blown away” by the Farm Progress Show. “This is like our Daytona 500! I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said in an interview with Chuck.
Kenny visited with lots of farmers during the three day show who made him feel very happy to be the Family Farmer American Ethanol spokesperson. “Farmers make me feel good,” he said. “They say thank you so much for putting up for us and that really humbles me,” he added.
The next big races for Wallace and all of NASCAR are coming up Chicagoland on September 16-18. Speedway president Scott Paddock says that triple header NASCAR weekend is a the first race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup – the first of ten ‘playoff’ style NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races in pursuit of the 2011 championship. “NASCAR was looking for a major media market and a big platform to kick off their playoffs and they chose Chicagoland and we’re honored to have that designation,” he said.
Scott says Illinois’ corn farmers will have a major presence at the Chicagoland event. “They’re going to have some combines and harvesters out there,” he said. “We’ll have over 100,000 fans out there that weekend so it’s a great way to get their message out about the important role farmers play in society.”
The Fast Five 225 truck series will kick off the weekend on Friday, September 16. The Dollar General 300 Nationwide series, Kenny’s race, will be Saturday, Sept. 17 and the three day weekend will conclude on Sunday, Sept. 18 with the GEICO 400 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
See the funny looking black and white design in the picture? That’s a QR code. If your mobile device has a QR Code reader on it, just point it at that image and voila, you’ll be taken to the latest Boomer information on the web. It’s that simple. Got your device with you now? Give it a try. It even works right off your computer screen right now! I saw a lot of these around the Farm Progress Show last week.
You’ll notice that the picture also includes a New Holland Boomer. I can’t forget to mention the New Holland Boomer 555 Contest we’ve been helping promote. New Holland is giving away a five year lease on a new Boomer 30 with front end loader to eight regional winners. Here’s where you can enter. While at the Farm Progress Show I spoke with Abe Hughes, New Holland Agriculture Sales & Marketing Vice President about the contest.
NASCAR team owner and former racer Richard Childress was at the 2011 Farm Progress Show last week to talk about the partnership between the racing series and American Ethanol, but he also put in a plug for the New Holland equipment he uses in his farming operation.
“I been over to the New Holland booth,” Richard said during a press availability with Growth Energy and the National Corn Growers Association. “That’s what we run on our farm, our vineyards. They have special tractors and it really works out great.”
Richard says he has had a cattle operation since the 1980s and is growing some soybeans this year in addition to his vineyard. “I got about 100 acres of grapes at home that we make some good North Carolina wine out of,” he told me.
The agriculture connection is what made Richard want to be a part of the American Ethanol NASCAR partnership when the series started using a 15% ethanol blend this year. Richard says it has been great. “I’m a huge supporter of everything we do in America, from our farmers to our military,” he said. “This country has to quit depending on so much foreign energy and resources. We gotta do better.”
He says that NASCAR has had no problems making the transition to 15% ethanol fuel and next year they will go to fuel injection. “The fuel injection and the American Ethanol is really going to work out great,” Richard says.
The Illinois Corn Growers tent was the location for a press announcement for the “Keep it for the Crop by 2025″ program.
Illinois agriculture organizations announced today a new, collaborative program to promote, implement and track the rate of adoption of enhanced nutrient stewardship practices by Illinois agricultural producers. “Keep it for the Crop by 2025″ will focus on the 4R’s of Nutrient Stewardship: Right Source, Right Rate, Right Time, Right Place.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) has identified six priority watersheds for nutrient reductions including Lake Bloomington, Lake Vermilion, Lake Decatur, Vermilion River (Illinois Basin), Salt Fork Vermilion River (Wabash Basin) and Lake Mauvaisse Terra. Marcia Wilhite, IEPA’s Bureau of Water Chief, said “The lakes and rivers in these watersheds have water quality problems due to too much nitrogen or phosphorus, or both. Illinois EPA strongly endorses efforts to promote voluntary action by producers to adopt nutrient stewardship practices in their watersheds.
Start-up funding for the program is being provided by the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, the Illinois Soybean Association and IFCA fertilizer manufacturer members Agrium, CF Industries, Koch Fertilizer, The Mosaic Company and Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.
I ran into DeLoss Jahnke, FFA Marketing/Communication Specialist (center), at the Farm Progress Show. I had not seen DeLoss since shortly after I left the Brownfield Network once upon a time. At that time he was our Indiana reporter. With him was Geoffrey Miller who works with him in communications at FFA.
The guys were out at the show to find and talk with former FFA members. They didn’t have to go far to look! In the photo they’re interviewing one former member who was attending the show. The FFA convention was a topic of discussion so I got a look ahead from them. It’s going to be October 19-22. There’s an expanded area in the Indianapolis Convention Center so the National FFA Expo will be bigger than ever. Blake Shelton will be performing too. DeLoss says that this year there will be a Native American Heritage Celebration so they’ll be highlighting contributions from native Americans to FFA. They also previewed the new FFA Ag Career Network that is coming soon.
You can listen to my interview with DeLoss and Geoffrey here: Update From FFA
During the Farm Progress Show I sat down and visited with Richard Barnes, Trellis Growing Systems, to talk about how and why he got started growing blackberries and a whole system now for other farmers. He says he started growing blackberries about eleven years ago on the family farm. Like a lot of growers, he had problems with his trellis system. So he applied for a USDA grant and got it. That kicked off the business and he started in 2007 doing mostly research until 2009 when the company started commercial operations. The feedback he’s been getting talking with farmers at the Farm Progress Show has been overwhelming. He says a lot of farmers are looking for alternative crops to enhance their existing operation. Blackberries are well suited to using land that might not be good for corn or soybeans for example. The system they’ve developed make the crop suitable for the cold weather season in the midwest. You can hear him explain all that in our video interview. Thank you to my human tripod and we did get a little breeze come through but I think it came out okay.
If you want more friends on Facebook all you’ve got to do is ask. That’s what Ag Leader Technology (Precision Pays sponsor) was doing in their new permanent Farm Progress Show building this week. Here’s Lori Costello (left) and Katie Beeler with the t-shirts that are part of the I like Ag Leader Technology promotion.
I talked with Katie about how things were going with this idea. Katie says they share a lot of information via their Facebook page and they wanted to get the word out to people and ask them to like their page. So how this works is, you go to their page, like them and then fill out a short survey telling a little about yourself so they know who they’re talking to and you can get one of the t-shirts you can see in the photo. Katie says the goal is 1,000 followers by the end of the year. I think we can help them beat that don’t you? Like Ag Leader Technology here.
I have to confess that working in air conditioning beats the 102 degrees in the media tent around noon yesterday! It may have been a cooker out there but this year’s Farm Progress Show was great in a lot of ways. Attendance seems fantastic and with the great weather all of the demonstrations were able to run as scheduled. This is a shot from the final morning when I got a little exercise climbing a Brock grain bin.
To find out how the show was going I caught up with Farm Progress Show manager, Matt Jungemann. Matt says that Tuesday was a record attendance and speculated that Wednesday was too. We chatted about one of the big sponsors of the show (and AgWired), GROWMARK. GROWMARK has been one of the foundation partners since the beginning of the dedicated Decatur show site. They support the host farmers in a number of ways that include the alfalfa in the parking lots, seed/fertilizer/inputs for demonstration fields and demo plots. As Matt points out, there is a lot of work on planning things like alfalfa field rotations.
Cindy and I did a little summary this morning to figure out just what we’ve done regarding Farm Progress Show this year. So here’s what we came up with: 889 total photos, 46 interviews/press conferences, 4 videos, 19 posts on AgWired so far and 7 on Precision Pays. That doesn’t count content produced for other client sites. We’ve got lots more to come!
The media tent is always a great place for people in the industry to catch up with each other – like Renewable Fuels Association president and CEO Bob Dinneen and National Corn Growers Association incoming president Garry Niemeyer of Auburn, Illinois.
I talked with both of them about challenges in Washington, ethanol policies, and the ability of corn growers to meet all demands even in the toughest weather years.
Bob is frustrated with the climate in Washington and the inability of Congress to get anything done, but he is always amazed by the ability of the nation’s farmers to do their job. “The fact of the matter is, the American farmer is the most productive and efficient in the world,” Bob says. “We will get through this and there will be enough supply to meet the needs for grain that exist.”
Garry says he expects his corn crop this year to be just about average and he notes that the latest USDA forecast still expects the corn crop to be the third largest in history. “Can you imagine what it would be like if we had 1980 hybrids during this type of a weather situation? We probably would be looking at a disaster,” Garry said. “That’s the importance of this show. We’re here looking at the technology in seed, machinery, guidance systems … we have the tools to do it but Mother Nature could help out a little better!”
I was out watching the field demos in the hot sun yesterday and was pleased to meet the hosts of the demo plots Dawn and David Brix.
“We take care of about 225 acres that we use for combine and tillage tune up and then Tuesday and Wednesday during the shows we have demos out there,” David told me.
They partner with GROWMARK FS on the field plots. “They keep an eye on it all year, whether it’s crop scouting, fungicide treatments, genetics,” David said. “They take the worry out of our hands, we’re doing the labor but they’re doing all the stuff to make sure it’s the best crop it can be.”
It has been a challenging year for the corn crop. “We didn’t plant until maybe the 10th, then it got flooded out and then we didn’t have another drop of rain after that,” he said. “All things considered, to still have 110-115 bushels yields, that’s pretty good.”
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.
Rick Nelson is not just a farmer from Paxton, Illinois – he’s a Master Farmer – and as such, he is helping to cultivate other master farmers in the state. 
One of the many farmer leaders who stopped by the media tent at Farm Progress show was Steve Wellman, a soybean producer from Syracuse, Nebraska who is First Vice President of the 
World Soybean Yield Champion and Rock Star Kip Cullers describes his corn crop in southwest Missouri this year as “horrible at best.” His first 4,000 acres averaged just 23 bushels an acre. 
One of the real live Pioneer ATMs out in the field is Jake Vossenkemper from the Decatur area, who says growers have hundreds of agronomy questions that they want answered. “They want to do the best job they can just like everyone else and our job is to step in and help them answer those questions,” Jake says.
Some of the high yielding innovators in the 2010 
There were quite a few race cars mixed in with the tractors and combines this year at the 
Kenny said he was “blown away” by the Farm Progress Show. “This is like our Daytona 500! I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said in an interview with Chuck. 
NASCAR team owner and former racer Richard Childress was at the 2011 Farm Progress Show last week to talk about the partnership between the racing series and 
The media tent is always a great place for people in the industry to catch up with each other – like 
I was out watching the field demos in the hot sun yesterday and was pleased to meet the hosts of the demo plots Dawn and David Brix.
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
