The U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) Board of Directors honored wheat producer Ron Suppes, Dighton, Kan., as he turned over the Chairman’s gavel to Michael Edgar, Yuma, Ariz., at its annual meeting July 28, 2008, in Kansas City, Mo. Also at the meeting, Janice Mattson, Chester, Mont., assumed the duties of Vice Chairman, while Don Schieber, Ponca City, Okla., assumed the Secretary-Treasurer position. The organization elects officers for the next marketing year (June-May) at its Winter Board Meeting.
“I have always been taught to do the best you can no matter what situation you face and to leave things in better shape than you found them,” Suppes said. “I only hope that during my chairmanship those things have taken place and benefitted our customers and U.S. wheat producers.” Four generations of Suppes’ family were at the meeting to help the organization celebrate his year as Chairman.
USW committees and joint committees with the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) also met and reported to the Board during the meeting. Several guests including Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Adrian Polansky, Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh, Kansas State University (Retired) and advisor to the Kansas Agriculture and Rural Leadership program, and Mark Gold, Managing Partner of Top Third Marketing, Chicago, Ill., made presentations. The Board also heard updates from David Cleavinger, President of NAWG, Wildorado, Texas, and Marcia Scheideman, President of Wheat Foods Council, Denver, Colo.
USW’s next board meeting is a joint session with NAWG Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, 2008 in Dallas, Texas.
The Wheat Food Council is celebrating its 35th anniversary and wants to use the milestone to help promote nutrition for children. That’s why the council is releasing a cookbook that’s meant to benefit a non-profit organization dedicated to influencing children’s eating habits through education.
In celebration of its 35th anniversary, the Wheat Foods Council today unveiled Food for Thought from Parents to Children, an educational cookbook featuring recipes from celebrity chef and mother of three, Chef Gale Gand, and parents across America. The cookbook showcases wheat-based recipes and addresses the importance of nutrition education for children, emphasizing a parent’s role in a child’s healthy diet.
A portion of cookbook proceeds benefits Spoons Across America, a not-for-profit organization that works to positively influence the eating habits of children through hands-on education. The cookbook is available for $3.50 and can be purchased online.
Food for Thought from Parents to Children features 30 recipes developed by parents throughout America and five exclusive creations from Chef Gand, award-winning pastry chef, cookbook author and Food Network personality. Nutritious, wheat-based recipes, in the categories of breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and desserts, are accompanied by educational facts about the featured foods including nutritional content, portion sizes and food origin. Also included is a guide that parents can use to ensure time spent in the kitchen with their kids is a fun, educational experience.
Each year at the Commodity Classic general session we get to hear from the Presidents of the participating associations. Here they are on stage involved in an interactive discussion with moderator John Phipps. Pictured left to right are John Hoffman, ASA, Ron Litterer, NCGA and John Thaemert, NAWG.
John starts out wondering how in the world these three guys got so lucky as to be President this year when we’ve got such fantastic market prices. It’s a lively discussion which I hope you’ll enjoy.
Listen to the 3 Amigos here:
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2008 Commodity Classic Photo Album
A record crowd converged on the 2008 Commodity Classic trade show this afternoon, welcomed by the bean guy.
There are over 4,450 registered attendees at the Classic this year and more than 140 media - both new records. The Classic photo album is up to date now with about 60 photos so far - but lots more to come!
AgWired coverage of the 2008 Commodity Classic
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2008 Commodity Classic Photo Album
Dr. Dirk Voeste from BASF Crop Protection Headquarters in Germany enlightened the media at Commodity Classic on the process of getting science on the seed at BASF.
According to Dirk, BASF seed treatment means protection plus vitality. He discussed the BASF concept of the German word “Verbund.”
“Verbund is not translated,” he explained. “It means really the linkage of expertises of various areas out of BASF. Polymer research, pigment research, agrichemicals, plant health, biotechnologies - which we will bring together for seed treatment to leverage it for American growers.”
“It’s like a recipe when cooking, you have to bring individual pieces together to get to a fine result at the end and BASF has all these recipes in house,” he added.
Dirk says BASF is planning to launch nine new products in the next two years to help improve the bottom line for US growers of various commodities.
Listen to my interview with Dirk here:
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2008 Commodity Classic Photo Album
Andy Lee is the director of business operations for US Crop Protection at BASF. In this position, he oversees all sales and marketing functions for BASF inthe US crop protection market.
In his presentation at BASF’s “Science Behind Seed Treatments” media symposium at the 2008 Commodity Classic in Nashville, Andy told the ag journalists that they are the answer to helping growers accelerate their yields to get closer to the record breaking corn and soybean yields that have been achieved in recent years. “It’s the information that you can get out to growers and retailers to show them how they can, if not achieve 154, maybe they can get 56 or 65, rather than the average yield,” he said.
Andy talked about the amazing success story of Headline fungicide, which was 70 percent of the market share for fungicides last year. “The Headlline that was used in corn and soybeans in 2007 gave growers over $450 million more income,” he said. “Three million acres of soybeans treated with Headline gave us 13.5 million bushels of extra beans. Seven million acres of corn treated with Headline gave us 112 million bushels (more). Basically, what that is is about 105,000 semis loaded with grain of new crop, new soybeans, new corn that previously the US market did not produce before.” And, more importantly, this was without any new acreage.
Listen to Andy’s short and informative presentation here:
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The BASF Flicker Photo Album has been updated with all the images from yesterday’s symposium and the riverboat fun afterward.
BASF 2008 Commodity Classic Symposium Photo Album
AgWired coverage of the 2008 Commodity Classic
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2008 Commodity Classic Photo Album
While Chuck is busy basking in the glorious Florida weather, I am preparing to head on out to the 2008 Commodity Classic in Nashville at the Opryland.
First on the agenda tomorrow afternoon is the BASF International Seed Treatment Symposium to provide us media types with all the latest info on BASF products and technology.
The Classic really gets rolling on Thursday with meetings for each of the three commodity groups - corn, soybeans and wheat - WIN sessions and the trade show grand opening.
The yet-to-be-completed Farm Bill will likely be a major topic of conversation and new agriculture secretary Ed Schafer will address the crowd on Friday during the general session.
We are also looking forward to Saturday night’s entertainment at the Grand Ole Opry featuring “Corn Fed” Shannon Brown, John Conlee, Joe Diffie, Carolina Rain and The Steeldrivers.
The Commodity Classic is the combined convention and trade show of the American Soybean Association, the National Corn Growers Association, and the National Association of Wheat Growers. Next year it will be even bigger when the National Sorghum Producers join the show. Having these groups all meeting together is one of the best unifying moves that the agricultural industry has made in the last decade. Not only does it make it easier for the producers who may grow more than one of those commodities, but it sure makes it easier for the ag media to cover it all in one trip!
Look forward to our coverage on both AgWired and Domestic Fuel all week long. Chuck will be joining me late Wednesday evening after wrapping up at the National Ethanol Conference.
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Drummers won’t be pounding out beats with wood if they start using Wheatware products. Nor will they be using plastic. Instead, they’ll be using, you guessed it, wheat. The new biodegradable product line also offers guitar picks, hangars and more.
To help protect the Earth’s virgin forests and reduce global warming, Wheatware.com, exclusive U.S. distributor of Wheatware™ products, has donated biodegradable-compostable drumsticks, guitar picks, clothes hangers and more — all made using wheat. The company has donated 272 pairs of Wheatware™ Compostable drumsticks, 3,240 Wheatware™ Compostable guitar picks, and 4,100 Wheatware™ Compostable clothes hangers to Live Earth musicians across the world, including London, England; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan — and best of all, New York City, America.
The launch of Wheatware™ products is part of Wheatware’s Great Switch-Out™ from Wood to Wheat, a campaign to entice people to switch from unsustainable tree products like wood to sustainable, crop-based ones like wheat, thus saving the forests critically needed to halt global warming. The passion of the founders of Wheatware™ is to replace the 45 billion pairs of disposable wood chopsticks produced every year which consume over 25 million virgin forest trees annually. For this reason, Wheatware decided to also include over 664 packages of their chopsticks made from the Wheatware™ BioMass-75 in all the gift bags sent to the Live Earth concerts. (more…)
Here’s a timely report from Paul McKellips, Global Outreach Officer, US Embassy Baghdad, The Green Room - Public Affairs GO Team. It’s almost time for Commodity Classic which will include wheat this year so finding out what’s going on with wheat production in Iraq is nice to know. It looks like seed cleaners are making all the difference in the world.
The southern Iraqi Province of Wassit shipped more than 110,000 tons of wheat and 90,000 tons of barley to state silos this past harvest. This is a record yield for the province and four times higher than the 2005-crop season’s 48,000 tons combined. Countrywide, Iraq produced 1.2 million tons of wheat and 144,000 tons of barley. The record harvest can be attributed to American help and improved technology.
Full Report (Word doc)
Listen to his report:
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“I have always been taught to do the best you can no matter what situation you face and to leave things in better shape than you found them,” Suppes said. “I only hope that during my chairmanship those things have taken place and benefitted our customers and U.S. wheat producers.” Four generations of Suppes’ family were at the meeting to help the organization celebrate his year as Chairman.
Cool Interactive Ideas in new media was the topic of a NAMA Boot Camp presentation by Erin Holte, Martin Williams.
