Monsanto Company announced a few weeks ago the appointment of David L. Chicoine, Ph.D., to the company’s Board of Directors. Dr. Chicoine is currently president of South Dakota State University (SDSU) in Brookings, South Dakota. Dr. Chicoine is also a nationally recognized economist, specializing in public finance, taxation and rural economies.
Prior to joining SDSU in 2007, Dr. Chicoine held various positions of increasing responsibility with the University of Illinois, most recently as Vice President for Technology and Economic Development. His higher education administrative experience at the University of Illinois also includes service as Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Dean of the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
This appointment has caused quite a stir at South Dakota State University. While many think that this partnership with Monsanto could bring advanced research opportunities to students and faculty, many are concerned about the politics of President Chicoine serving on the Monsanto Board of Directors. While he makes $300,000 as SDSU’s president, Monsanto will give him $400,000 compensation for his time on the board. I have listened intently to both sides of the story, and I can see why there are differing views. If you haven’t read up on this scenario, I have included some of the “hot button” articles in the news for you to read. Let me know your thoughts in this situation. Should a president of a university sit on a company’s board of directors? Are people overreacting, or is the community outburst warranted? What needs to change at land-grant universities, or what could be improved upon in the future? Looking for your thoughts and opinions today.
Monsanto keeps moving forward into the online conversation with regular Planting Updates. Do you think these are that much different than the news you get from the “regular media.” Tyne Morgan is the Monsanto “reporter” out in the field. In this episode you not only get a planting update you also hear what farmers think the general public thinks of them. The production quality is good and the content is interesting.
Obviously Monsanto is not relying on their main website to be the only destination for their customers. They’re reaching out beyond the confines of a web destination to engage them and interact with them. If you doubt that’s happening then you should start following them on Twitter. Is it easy for Monsanto to quantify the exact ROI on this? I doubt it. Does that mean they shouldn’t do it? No.
For Norman Borlaug’s 95th birthday today, Monsanto has created a $10 million grant to establish the Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program, which will “help identify and support young scientists interested in improving research and production in rice and wheat, two of the world’s most important staple crops, through plant breeding techniques.”
Monsanto is funding the program, which will be administered by Texas AgriLife Research, an agency of the Texas A&M University System, for the next five years. The program honors the accomplishments of Dr. Henry Beachell and Dr. Norman Borlaug, who pioneered plant breeding and research in rice and wheat, respectively.
Applications will be reviewed by an independent panel of global judges chaired by Program Director Dr. Ed Runge, who is also a professor and Billie B. Turner Chair in Production Agronomy (Emeritus) within the Soil and Crop Sciences Department, Texas A&M University at College Station.
Students interested in applying to the program can find more details at www.monsanto.com/mbbischolars. Applications will be accepted until May 31.
Announcement of the first year’s winners is planned to correspond with the World Food Prize held in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 15, 2009.
Besides the new Genuity brand, Monsanto was also promoting other brands at Commodity Classic. One such brand is Acceleron, a seed treatment system. I’m sure there are still people who aren’t quite sure just what Acceleron is. To help explain it, I spoke with Tom Schaefer.
He says they launched the product line last fall. They had in-field plots out and saw great performance and yield increases. He says growers should know that the beans will be a different color and they’ll see good plantability and early season performance. There is a pretty tight supply this season on Round Up Ready Yield on bean varieties so he suggests calling your dealer now.
New Acceleron™ Seed Treatment System helps maximize the performance potential of your seed and traits right from the start. Designed to complement new seed and trait products, Acceleron can improve stands and plant health to help maximize the performance potential of your crop.
Available in 2009 as a feature of Genuity™ Roundup Ready 2 Yield™ soybeans. Followed by the introduction of corn in 2010 and expansion into other crops and vegetables in 2011 benefiting hybrids, varieties and traits across a broad geography.
You can listen to my interview with Tom here:
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At last week’s Commodity Classic I learned a new word - Genuity. My teacher was Dion McBay, Monsanto trait marketing lead.
Genuity is a new brand that provides Monsanto with a new platform to deliver new technologies to the marketplace. The name came from the work of a brand development team that talked to farmers across the country. The name meant things like genuine and the “gen” part seemed to suggest genes or genesis so Genuity it is. Dion says that the Monsanto brand covers a lot of things and with Genuity they can focus on a brand that “promises to deliver technology products that help farmers do what they do best, even better.” A media and public relations campaign is scheduled to start immediately to begin introducing the brand to farmers.
You can listen to my iPhone interview with Dion here:
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In this week’s program you get to meet Brooke Hoelscher and Megan Ott. They’re the Monsanto Future Ag Journalist Fellowship students who were set up to cover the Commodity Classic on blogs created by Monsanto - Brooke’s Commodity Insider and Megan’s Classic Chronicle.
We had a nice chat in the media room at Commodity Classic. Brooke is a junior ag communications and journalis major at Texas A&M University and Megan is a Sophomore at the University of Illinois and also majoring in ag communications. They were taking photos, recording audio interviews and shooting video clips during their stay which are posted on their blog. I think that, like me, they’ve still got stories to post too. They’re really grateful for the opportunity they have to attend Classic and see and learn what’s going on in the industry. I’m sure this will help them in their careers.
Both of them are quite familiar with Facebook. I thought it was funny when Megan said she was a little scared when her Mom got on Facebook. Both agree that the internet is where communication is today. They had never heard of Twitter before coming to Classic but found out right away how many people in ag communications were tweeting away.
This week’s program ends with music from the Podsafe Music Network. It’s a song called, “Answers From Me” by Classic Tragic Hero. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.
You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: ZimmCast 210 (19 min MP3)
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This afternoon I finally got to meet the Monsanto Future Ag Journalist Fellowship winners. Brooke Hoelscher (r) and Megan Ott (l) were escorted to my work station in the media room at Commodity Classic. Apparently they weren’t allowed access to the media room even though they had media badges. These students will someday possibly be professional ag journalists and part of the rationale for the Monsanto program is to provide them with a “real world” opportunity to write about their experience at Classic and interact with professionals. Unfortunately, they are not considered to be “media” and therefore, since they’re staying in a different hotel they have to go back to their hotel to post on their websites and they don’t get to have that professional journalist experience. However, they’re taking pictures, doing interviews and all the same things us professionals are doing.
I had the fortune of participating in the very first Monsanto Future Ag Journalist Fellowship project. One of them is now a very respected member of the professional ag journalist ranks. I guess I’m wondering how these media room policies are promoting good media relations and the development of professional ag journalists who will be the leaders in the industry tomorrow. I’ll be featuring my interview with Brooke and Megan in my ZimmCast podcast on Monday. They’re awesome young talents and just talking with them helps inspire this old ag journalist as I hope it will you.
Monsanto has launched a blog with multiple contributors and they start right out being pretty open about “things.” I think this is great and look forward to how it develops. I’ve been following Kathleen (Ms Monsanto) on Twitter for a while now so it looks like this is one ag company that is not only understanding social media but not afraid to take part in it. Here’s some excerpts from their first post:
This blog will address issues related to Monsanto, our business, and technology in agriculture.
The title Monsanto According to Monsanto is a spoof of The World According to Monsanto, a horribly biased documentary which portrays Monsanto in a very negative light. Aside from the shoddy journalism, we at Monsanto found it incredibly arrogant that the filmmaker would present her own twisted view of Monsanto as the company’s view of the world.
If anyone should speak to Monsanto’s vision of the world, it’s those of us who come to work here every day and collectively make this company what it is. This is the main reason for this blog.
Monsanto has a fair number of critics. Technology in agriculture is an emotional topic and there are organizations or individuals who generally oppose modern agriculture or biotechnology. This blog will be used on a rather frequent basis to respond to criticism leveled against Monsanto and the use of technology in agriculture. On occasion we’ll use the blog to levy some criticism ourselves. We expect that some of these postings will generate controversy. Creating controversy isn’t the intention of this blog, but it’s inevitable.
ZimmComm has had the pleasure and honor to work on various projects with Monsanto btw. It’s great having them more involved in the online conversation!
Monsanto is sponsoring a Commodity Classic blogger once again this year. Thanks to Tyne Morgan, former Classic blogger herself, for the heads up. This year Brooke Hoelscher will be providing her perspective on the Classic happenings in Grapevine, TX. Here’s a little bit about Brooke.
I am a junior Agriculture Communications and Journalism major at Texas A&M University. I study the principals of professional writing, editing, public relations, and advertising in the agriculture industry. I plan to graduate in December 2009 and pursue a career in marketing and public relations.
The readers of No-Till Farmer magazine voted on the products that performed best in their no-till operations in 2008 - and the “No-Till Product of the Year” winner is - Headline fungicide from BASF.
No-till products in 11 specific categories were also selected as the best of their field for 2008. Each of the products and their manufacturers were honored during an awards ceremony last week at the 17th annual National No-Tillage Conference in Indianapolis. Other winners were:
No-Till Equipment: Early Riser Planters, Case IH
Planter/Drill Attachments: Martin Row Cleaners, Martin Industries
Strip-Till Equipment: Blu-Jet StripTill System, Thurston Manufacturing
Spray Equipment: AGCO Spra-Coupe 7000 Series, AGCO
Residue Management: The Spreader, The Spreader Inc.
Fertility: Agrotain, Agrotain International
Insect Protection: YieldGard VT Triple, Monsanto
Fungicides: Headline, BASF
Seed Treatment: Cruiser, Syngenta Seed Care
Precision Tools: RTK AutoSteer, AutoFarm
Weed Control: Roundup PowerMax, Monsanto
BASF and Monsanto Company have joined forces to accelerate the development of next-generation of dicamba-based weed control chemistry products. The partnership will be working to develop crops that are resistant to both Roundup® agricultural herbicides and dicamba to deliver significant on-farm benefits to growers.
According to Monsanto Global Chemistry lead Sean Gardner, “Combining a second type of herbicide resistance with Roundup Ready® technology would offer growers multiple tools for weed control through the use of Roundup®, dicamba, or combinations of both herbicides.”
Dicamba is a benzoic acid herbicide and BASF is currently the largest provider of dicamba and dicamba-based solutions.
Monsanto is making a bold move with a unique partnership with the Weather Channel. Nothing like taking two of the things most important to farmers and making it easily available to them in an online and social networking environment!
The Weather Channel Interactive, in partnership with agricultural products leader Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON), announced a new section on weather.com® dedicated to weather and farming at www.weather.com/farming. Within the Agriculture News & Forecast, the main feature is the Farmers Forecast, which includes up-to-date weather information that matters most to the agricultural community, such as severe weather alerts affecting crops and detailed data about precipitation, wind and soil moisture.
The new Farmers Forecast adds farming-related alerts in addition to the severe weather alerts already available through the weather.com site. These will alert consumers to warnings with freeze, frost, high wind or hail indicators for each forecasted day. With precipitation being critical for the farming community, not only does the page include the percent of precipitation, but it also includes an actual projection of the amount of rain that is expected.
Weather.com/farming will offer several components to help farmers make decisions before and throughout the season. From the same page, users can easily change locations to keep up with multiple farms or compare sites. Among the information included on the new section:
· Soil moisture information
· Detailed wind data
· Sunrise and sunset times
· UV index
The section is also a one-stop resource for the latest agriculture news. Users can stay up to date with articles related to the industry while checking out the next day’s forecast. Users can easily bookmark any page within the new section, such as the Farmers Forecast, to return to this practical resource and connect it to social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and others.
Along with the new section within the weather.com site, Monsanto will also run an online campaign throughout 2009 featuring many of its brands such as Deltapine, DEKALB, Asgrow, Yieldgard, Roundup Ready and Roundup PowerMax.
Post Update: If you’re an iPhone owner make sure that when you use your browser that you select the “Classic Weather Channel” link instead of the mobile version. This isn’t available in the mobile version yet.
Do you have a future in cotton? Want to have one? Then write an essay and enter this Deltapine scholarship program.
The future of the U.S. cotton industry continues to rely on new talents and fresh perspectives. To keep bright young minds involved in cotton, Monsanto is creating the Deltapine Class of 09 scholarship program. The program will award nine $1,000 college scholarships to high school students in the class of ’09 who are interested in a career in cotton.
The scholarships will be awarded to nine students whose essays best express “My Future in CottonSM.” Eligibility requirements include:
· High school seniors who will graduate in 2009 with plans to enroll in a full-time undergraduate accredited 2- or 4-year college or university with the intent to engage in a course of study related to agriculture or agribusiness.
· A minimum GPA of 2.8 on a 4.0 scale; involvement in agriculture or with agricultural organizations; and living in a cotton-producing state.
· Those applicants whose families are directly involved in cotton production will be given special consideration.
· Persons related to employees of Monsanto, its agencies or competitive companies are not eligible to participate.
To apply, go to http://www.MyFutureInCotton.com for complete eligibility and criteria requirements. Winners will be announced on Jan. 6, 2009 at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences in an Antonio, TX, and listed on the Web site Jan. 7, 2009. All winners will be notified via email prior to this date.
For the third year, the Truth About Trade and Technology (TATT) held a Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable in conjunction with the World Food Prize events. Over 20 farmers from as many nations participated in the event this year to discuss biotech agriculture in their countries, according to TATT chairman Dean Kleckner.
“Either how we’re using it and here’s what it’s done for us or we’d like to use it and our government won’t let us,” Kleckner said. “They just sit around a table and talk. It’s really fun, interesting and intellectually stimulating.”
Last year, TATT established a Trade and Technology Advancement Award to recognize “leadership, vision and resolve in advancing the rights of all farmers to choose the technology and tools that will improved the quality, quantity and availability of agricultural products around the world.” This year’s winner was Jeff Bidstrup of Queensland, Australia - pictured here with his wife Marilyn as Dean presented them with the award.
Listen to an interview with Dean here:
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Another farmer who took part in the global roundtable was Oliver Ransmann of Germany, who was able to attend at the last minute because he happened to be visiting Monsanto in St. Louis last week prior to the World Food Prize symposium. I had a very interesting conversation with him about the lack of acceptance of biotech in his country and Europe in general. He just started using biotech crops two years ago on his 400 ha farm that grows mainly corn and rye to generate biogas.
He told me that farmers who choose to grow biotech crops in Germany are “branded” in a way and subject to vandalism. “This year my ground was damaged by activists - we had iron sticks in the fields and spoons and knives in the grain,” he told me. “We can’t understand why people are doing it and it’s very dangerous.” Why does he do it? “If I’m not using Bt maize, I have 30-40 percent less productivity and I can’t afford it,” he said.
Listen to this interesting interview with Oliver here:
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Here’s the New Holland crew after just finishing corn harvesting at the Farm Science Review. I spoke to Mike Craig about what they found.
He says they had been running for two days and that they were getting between 130 to 150 bushels with 18 to 20% moisture.
I asked him what’s new from New Holland and he says it’s their 8 row corn head with stalk chopper on each row unit which he says, “Allows us to chop the stalk as the ear is being pulled off from it to help with the residue on the ground.” He says it’s on display at their exhibit. Mike also says he really enjoys the interaction with farmers at the show.
You can listen to my interview with Mike here:
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While I was visiting the Ohio Corn Growers exhibit at the Farm Science Review I had a nice talk with 5 time IHRA Funny Car Champion Mark Thomas. Here he is explaining his car to an FFA student.
Mark is not only a professional drag racer but a farmer himself. He has 500 Holstein cows and farms 2,200 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa. You’d think that would be enough to keep him busy!
One of his passions is ethanol. He basically grows his own fuel and has had a mission to help educate the public about this renewable energy source. So that’s part of his message here at the show. I asked him about how his farm business was going. He says that the past year or so has been pretty good but it’s basically making up for years that weren’t so good. However, he says that there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future and with the problems lately in financial markets there’s good reason to wonder.
He says the question he gets asked most often standing by his funny car is, “How much horse power?” It’s got 3,000 HP and goes from zero to 250 mph in 5.7 seconds! Of course he runs on ethanol and he says the car uses just over a gallon of ethanol per second.
You can listen to my interview with Mark here:
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The Ohio Corn Growers Association have a nice building on the grounds of the Farm Science Review. One of their board members has been involved with it for many years. He’s Ron Rockhold, pictured on the right. Ron says he farms in southern Fayette County and has been on the board for going on 20 years. He spends one day working in the exhibit and one day with his brother “taking in the sights.”
Ron says this show is a great thing for agriculture. He says the message they’re trying to get across to growers is what’s happening with legislation, especially the farm bill and the rfs standard. In fact, he says, “. . . talking about the RFS which is even more important than the farm bill because it increases the demand for corn and has raised the price of corn to where farmers are getting their money from the market now instead of from the government.” That’s something he says he’s always wanted to see.
You can listen to my interview with Ron here:
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Harvesting corn and soybeans isn’t the only field demonstration you’ll see at the Farm Science Review. There’s also a section devoted to precision agriculture.
I went out to the field when these got started and spoke with John Deere’s Jamie Bultemeier (pictured on the left). He was conducting a precision tillage demonstration. Jamie’s an agronomist by training so he focuses on crop production as it relates to seeding, tillage, sprayers and GPS equipment.
In his demonstration he was tying two of those together. He says they have a John Deere 2510S strip till rig being guided by John Deere RTK sub inch accuracy steering to allow for repeatable planting next spring. After running down a row a little ways he stopped to talk with farmers and they commented on how moist the ground was even though there had been little rain of late.
Questions he gets asked a lot include, “How should I set it? What fertilizer should I use? What kind of attachments should I put on?” He says he’s spoken with about an equal number of farmers who are using the technology and those who aren’t yet.
You can listen to my interview with Jamie here:
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I also caught Jamie doing an end of the row run during his demonstration which you can watch here:
I think this year’s Farm Science Review has had the best weather of any farm show I’ve ever attended. Of course they had to go through some nail-biting times just prior to the show when the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through. In this week’s show I talk with show manager, Chuck Gamble. He says he’s all about promoting agriculture. In fact, he received one of the new Honorary Farm Broadcaster awards from ABN Radio on the opening day.
One of the new things at the show this year is the re-naming of Chemical Ave. to Conservation Ave. He says this was done “to honor (farmers) who I call the ultimate conservationists.”
Another new feature of the show is a “wireless internet cloud.” Chuck says that they didn’t have cable out to the show site but this year they laid in fiber optic and put up over 50 small towers around the exhibit area. It’s fast, reliable and everywhere. So besides us media types, exhibitors now have a new resource.
I’d love to see other farm shows adopt this type of infrastructure at their permanent sites.
The program this week ends with music from the Podsafe Music Network. Since I just attended a swine health seminar you get to listen to “Rocket Science” from Brain Buckit. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.
You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: ZimmCast 187 (15 min MP3)
Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:
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The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar. You can also subscribe in iTunes
Guess how many photos we've got in our archives that are tagged "farm." Let's just say, it's a lot..
Twittering Farmer
Farmers are twittering and then there's The Twittering Farmer.
He's Steve Tucker and my interview in this week's program. Steve and I discuss the story that featured him on CNN today and the feedback he's received which has been kind of overwhelming. He's a great advocate for agriculture who now has more Twitter followers than there are residents in his home town.
Monsanto Company announced a few weeks ago the appointment of David L. Chicoine, Ph.D., to the company’s Board of Directors. Dr. Chicoine is currently president of South Dakota State University (SDSU) in Brookings, South Dakota. Dr. Chicoine is also a nationally recognized economist, specializing in public finance, taxation and rural economies.
For Norman Borlaug’s 95th birthday today, Monsanto has created a $10 million grant to establish the Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program, which will “help identify and support young scientists interested in improving research and production in rice and wheat, two of the world’s most important staple crops, through plant breeding techniques.”
Besides the new 
At last week’s Commodity Classic I learned a new word - 
In this week’s program you get to meet Brooke Hoelscher and Megan Ott. They’re the Monsanto Future Ag Journalist Fellowship students who were set up to cover the Commodity Classic on blogs created by Monsanto - 
This afternoon I finally got to meet the 
and 
Monsanto is sponsoring a 
The readers of 
Do you have a future in cotton? Want to have one? Then write an essay and enter this 
For the third year, the 
Another farmer who took part in the global roundtable was Oliver Ransmann of Germany, who was able to attend at the last minute because he happened to be visiting 
We’ve heard a lot about wind damage to corn but I guess it’s not just limited to here in Ohio.
Here’s the New Holland crew after just finishing corn harvesting at the Farm Science Review. I spoke to Mike Craig about what they found.
While I was visiting the Ohio Corn Growers exhibit at the Farm Science Review I had a nice talk with 5 time IHRA Funny Car Champion 
The 
Harvesting corn and soybeans isn’t the only field demonstration you’ll see at the Farm Science Review. There’s also a section devoted to precision agriculture.
Another new feature of the show is a “wireless internet cloud.” Chuck says that they didn’t have cable out to the show site but this year they laid in fiber optic and put up over 50 small towers around the exhibit area. It’s fast, reliable and everywhere. So besides us media types, exhibitors now have a new resource. 
Farmers are twittering and then there's The Twittering Farmer.