How Farmer Insights Can Improve Your Marketing

Joanna Schroeder

For those of you in the agriculture business, you probably have spent countless hours wondering what farmers are thinking and how best to reach them. Well, there is no need to wonder any longer, now you can just know. How? Through Successful Farming’s Farmer Insight research. Here is a quick fact: did you know that farmers under the age of …

NAMA, Research

Africa Rice Center Receives Communications Award

Chuck Zimmerman

The Africa Rice Center received two awards at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Now that’s a mouthful. The conference is taking place in Montpellier, France. One of the awards was for communications, which caught my eye. The 2009 CGIAR Outstanding Communication Award was presented to Dr Paul Van Mele, …

International, Research

Corn Ethanol Still in Its Infancy

Joanna Schroeder

The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) is relatively new to Commodity Classic with this being their third year. You could tell when you talked with John Caupert, the director of NCERC, how excited he was to be there so I asked him why. “There’s energy, there’s enthusiasm back around around ethanol and biofuels. Some people believe that corn ethanol is …

Audio, Commodity Classic, Corn, Ethanol, Research

Techniques for Increasing Corn Yield

Joanna Schroeder

Dr. Ron Heiniger with North Carolina State University is an expert in corn. For many years, he has been researching how to increase corn yields and some of the research he has done in his test plots are showing promising results – 300+ bushels per acre results. To put this number in perspective, the average bushel per acre yield for …

Agribusiness, Corn, Research

U of I Unveils First Ever Miscanthus Harvester and Planter

Joanna Schroeder

Farmers who are considering growing miscanthus as a bioenergy feedstock now have a tool to make it easier. After years of collaboration and research, a miscanthus rhizome regeneration harvester and planter system has been developed. The unveiling took place during the Bioenergy Feedstocks Symposium held at the University of Illinois (U of I). Typically, miscanthus is a labor-intensive crop requiring …

Equipment, Ethanol, Research

Fluidigm System Work Flow

Chuck Zimmerman

In this latest edition of the stories about Fluidigm Corporation you’ll get to meet Amy Hamilton, Technical Support Specialist. Amy works in the lab at Fluidigm headquarters. She walks us through a workflow of the Fluidigm System. As you’ll see in the video, the size and scale of equipment needed for the Fluidigm System to conduct many different simultaneous samples …

Agribusiness, Biotech, Research

54.9 Million Acres Irrigated, Says USDA

Amanda Nolz

As a livestock producer, I like to follow the trends as pastures are converted to cropland. In many places, pastures will always be there, as the land is too steep, hilly or rocky for modernizing or farming. However, the low profit margins in the livestock industry are pushing many farmers and ranchers to expand their crop enterprise and decrease their …

Research, Sustainability

Genotyping With Fluidigm

Chuck Zimmerman

With a title like Director of Molecular Biology you might think that it would be hard for a non-technical person to carry on a conversation with Ramesh Ramakrishna. Not so. Ramesh works for Fluidigm Corporation and is my latest interview in the series we’re doing to introduce the agribusiness world to their break through research technology. In our interview you’ll …

Agribusiness, Audio, Biotech, Research, Video

Nicholson Kovac Veterinarian New Media Usage Study

Chuck Zimmerman

Nicholson Kovac has once again documented what agrimarketers know intuitively. This time it’s about veterinarians. The agency just released its Veterinarian New Media Usage Study. It has some interesting findings that should help make marketing decisions using new media easier to justify. The Veterinarian New Media Usage Study provides comprehensive insight on the use of new and social media among …

Agencies, Research, Social Networking