Gateway NAMA Board Meets

Chuck Zimmerman

Gateway NAMA BoardThe Gateway NAMA board met yesterday for some program/membership planning. I’m waiting on a summary of what we accomplished to help with member communications. I can tell you that we’ve been pretty inactive but with some fresh talent in leadership hopefully we’ll change that around this coming year. We’re looking at a mix of fun and educational sessions that will be of interest to all members.

I just thought I’d share this with you and encourage you to become a NAMA member and get involved in your nearest chapter or at least participate in the national events like the annual convention or fall Trends In Agriculture conference. You’ll be glad you did even for no other reason than the networking and contacts you’ll make.

NAMA

Carbon and Land Use Models Being Discussed

Chuck Zimmerman

NCGA Land Use ConferenceDo you understand things like indirect land use when it comes to regulations via departments like the EPA due to the RFS? Me either. And I’ve sat in on conferences and discussions and interviews on the subject for a while now. That’s because an issue like indirect land use involves predicting the future based on certain assumptions that may or may not be valid, especially if they’re based on out of date data and information. So that’s part of what the NCGA is dealing with at their Land Use and Carbon Impacts of Corn-Based Ethanol Conference which has many different presenters talking about their models and research. A large crowd is gathered to ask them questions.

The Conference Chairman is Jamey Cline, NCGA Director Biofuels and Business Development. I caught up to him on a break to learn why NCGA was conducting this event and what they hope to achieve as a result.

Jamey says that regulations from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and from EPA on the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) have brought up a number of questions and this conference was put together to ask them and receive answers in a public forum with various stakeholders. A lot of these current or proposed regulations are based on assumptions and economic theory and so questions need to be asked to make sure the latest data is being used and reasonable predictions are made for the future. He says that these issues are extremely important to agribusiness and corn growers in particular because if the CARB regs hold up, by 2012 they will effectively shut off that market to ethanol. Additionally, one presenter said that due to the proposed climate change bill and RFS, approximately 27.1 million acres would be taken out of production across the Unites States. That would have a huge impact on our economy, especially in rural areas.

Ag Groups, Audio, Biofuels, Corn, NCGA

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • Mani Iyer, President of Mahindra USA Inc. in Tomball, Texas, has been named to the Board of Directors of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
  • The 2009 STIHL Dogs and Logs World Championship presented by STEADFAST CANINE was held last month in Stillwater, MN, gathering the world’s top DockDogs and Ironjacks (elite competitive lumberjacks). This year’s competition featured the top 54 DockDogs and top 8 Ironjacks in North America.
  • The U.S. Soybean Federation Board of Directors met to continue setting direction for the policy and advocacy organization. Directors established a new policy priority for the organization: Cap and Trade.
  • In order to fund the year-long project of digitizing, indexing and placing 88 years of journals on the internet, the Poultry Science Association Foundation has created The Legacy Project.
    Zimfo Bytes

    AgChat Summary

    Chuck Zimmerman

    AgChatIf you weren’t able to participate in last night’s AgChat session via Twitter then you missed a good one. The topic was going to be bioenergy but that got moved to next week in favor of a focus on how agriculture is portrayed in the mainstream media in light of a recent article in Time Magazine and an opinion piece in the N. Y. Times. As always, you can follow back through the conversation via Twitter Search.

    It was obvious pretty quickly that this topic and the questions hit a nerve with people and tweets were being posted fast and furious. For the most part it was a very polite, professional and courteous conversation. However, we did have a couple of anti-ag contributors who obviously have no real experience with ag and were involved in an attempt to disrupt things. My advice is to ignore people like that on Twitter or any social networking mechanism. It’s one thing to disagree on an issue but it’s another to when someone becomes antagonistic, insulting and unwilling to participate on the same basis as everyone else. But that’s also part of what makes these networks great. We have the freedom and ability to interact directly with people and I believe that leads to better understanding without the need to depend on mainstream media journalists who have their own agenda.

    Here’s the list of questions we dealt with:

    Q1 via @narthur Is mainstream media sensationalizing (e.g. Jerry Springer) to combat traditional media malaise? What do we do?

    Q2 via @akleinschmidt If the journalists were here tonight, what would you like them to know about your #farm or part of #ag?

    Q3 via @TruffleMedia Is #ag calling kettle black? Hard ?, but tactics used in recent articles have likely been used by modern ag.

    Q4 via @TruffleMedia What are the outcomes we want to accomplish by a rebuttal to current media stories?

    Q5 Via @NEFarmBureau Would there be interest in a clearinghouse to report agenda-driven media contacts (those who seem suspicous)?

    Q6 via @farmerscotty Why does the media portray us in #ag as stuck in 1950’s-era through photos & references to good ole days?

    Q7 via @akleinschmidt Inference is big, modern, efficient=bad, unsafe, ‘souless’. Where/when did we lose connection-How to repair?

    Q8: What’s the one executable idea you’ve picked up from #agchat tonight?

    I know many of you will be attending the Farm Progress Show next week. Please attend our tweetup on Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 3-5 pm at the @hellocountry tent. Please remember to use the #FPS09 hashtag in your tweets while you’re in Decatur, Il! See you there.

    Thanks again to Michele Payn-Knoper for moderating. Also feel free to check out AgChat on Facebook.

    Uncategorized

    NCGA Talking Land Use

    Chuck Zimmerman

    NCGA Land Use ConferenceThe NCGA Land Use and Carbon Impacts of Corn-Based Ethanol Conference is underway here at the Renaissance hotel by the St. Louis airport. This is our first panel discussion on “Emission Factors and Land Use Change Modeling” which is being moderated by Geoff Cooper, Renewable Fuels Association. We’re talking some very involved talks on things like Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Analysis, Measuring Indirect Land Use from Biofuels, Analysis of the RFS and more.

    This conference is dealing with some issues that are vitally important to everyone in agribusiness and I will be conducting some interviews with our panelists and presenters this afternoon and will be posting them in coming days.

    Although I’m shooting photos with my Nikon, I’m also making a photo album of iPhone photos which you can find here: NCGA Land Use Conference Photo Album

    Ag Groups, Biodiesel, Biofuels, Corn, Environment, NCGA

    Register for NAMA Trends In Agriculture

    Chuck Zimmerman

    NAMA Trends In AgricultureRegistration is open for this fall’s NAMA Trends In Agriculture program in Kansas City, MO, Nov. 10-11. I’ll be there and also for the NAFB convention which follows.

    Speaking of NAMA, I’m heading to St. Louis today for a Gateway chapter board meeting. We’ve got some new faces in leadership who are going to be discussing the challenges of planning meetings and getting members to attend. This has been a real challenge for years now! If you’re a NAMA member and you’ve received benefit from your membership then please volunteer to help your local chapter and attend the meetings.

    After that I’m stopping by the NCGA Land Use and Carbon Impacts of Corn-Based Ethanol Conference. I’m sure I’ll get some good interviews to use here and on our Domestic Fuel website among others. Looking forward to my first road trip in a while!

    NAMA

    Zimfo Bytes

    Melissa Sandfort

      Zimfo Bytes

    • Andrew (Andy) Stevens, editor of American Small Farm magazine, has been inducted into both the Ohio Ag Hall of Fame and the Farm Science Review Hall of Fame.
    • Consumers rank almonds as the most essential nut and the top nut consumers choose most to eat on an ongoing basis, according to the Almond Board of California’s 2009 Consumer Attitudes, Awareness and Usage of California Almonds.
    • USDA releases rural digital economy research: This Briefing Room offers a synthesis of ERS research about the rural digital economy, including the provision of telephone and Internet services, where these services are used, and their role in economic development.
    • Kuhn North America, Inc. introduces the newly upgraded EL 43 and EL 53 power tiller lines with working widths ranging from 42″ to 74″ and 38″ to 74″ respectively.
      Uncategorized

      Record Phone Calls On Your iPhone

      Chuck Zimmerman

      Recorder 10Hey farm podcasters. You know there are a lot of equipment options to record audio out there and I’ve mentioned that the iPhone is a really good one. Now there’s an app for the iPhone that provides a way to record a call, trim the ends and email it.

      I just tested the Recorder v.10 app ($.99) and emailed to my Posterous account which updates my Twitter feed and Facebook. Recorder actually saves the file (good for 10 days) and puts a link to it in your post. Since I had chosen the high quality option on the app you get to choose to listen to or download an mp3 file version or aiff version. The aiff file is bigger and much better quality and can be listened to by most audio players and edited easily. If you don’t email the file you can just connect and download by connecting to your phone via wifi connection too.

      Since the phone call has to go through the the Recorder phone system (the iPhone won’t allow direct dial recording yet) you have to pay a small fee for recording time and the quality could be better. However, I found the aiff file version quite acceptable for a quick audio conversation that you can use in a broadcast, podcast or post a link to a web page.

      So, as I told someone on the phone the other day, the need for a set of equipment to connect your computer to your phone line is becoming obsolete. I have a complete JK Audio/Behringer phone hybrid system for this that I just don’t even use anymore. Between Skype and this app I’m no longer tethered to my work station!

      Equipment

      TIME for Yellow Journalism

      Cindy Zimmerman

      If you look up the definition of “yellow journalism” you should find a picture of last week’s TIME Magazine cover story – which was renamed “Getting Real about the High Cost of Cheap Food” – after first being headlined “America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix it.”

      Wikipedia gives several characteristics of yellow journalism that fit this attack on modern agriculture, such as the “practice of over-dramatizing events,” “scare headlines in huge print,” and the use of “misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.”

      This very one-sided article used only one quote from an agricultural organization in more than 3200 words that condemn both crop and livestock production in the United States as heading us down the road to a “future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste.”

      I spent more time on this fantasy story than it is worth writing a post on Corn Commentary about it, and several other agricultural reporters have done the same. See in particular – Chuck Jolley with Cattle Network, who digs into the article author’s background; commentary from Rick Jordahl with Pork magazine; and a call from Drovers encouraging people to send letters to the editor at TIME regarding the story.

      Corn, Livestock, Media, Swine, Wackos

      The Real Purpose of 4-H Livestock Projects

      Amanda Nolz

      IMG_2436 Every summer, my family spends a lot of time working on our show cattle to take to livestock expos around the country. These shows are both educational and fun, and over the years, they have quickly become our family “vacations,” too.

      I ran across this positive article about the real purpose of 4-H livestock projects written by Extension Educator Randall Saner in the Grant Tribune Sentinel. Check it out!

      One purpose of 4-H livestock projects is to teach young people how to care for, properly feed, groom and show their animals as well as understand the interaction and value of animals to human life.

      Another important purpose is to provide an opportunity for personal growth and development of the young person through responsibility, critical thinking and communications skills.

      Uncategorized