If you’re looking for something to watch today besides college football, then you might want to tune in to Farm Aid.
Farm Aid 2008 Presented by Whole Foods Market and Horizon Organic is today! Doors open at noon and the music starts shortly after. If you’re not coming to the show, watch all the action on in HD on DIRECTV or on FarmAid.org. Both broadcasts start at 4pm and will be live until 11pm with no commercials!
Dancing To Quasimojo
I don’t know when the first Quasimojo performance was at an IFAJ event but they’re still going strong.
This year’s Congress found them playing on stage after our final dinner in Portoroz, Slovenia. We had just finished all the speeches and awards and were full and it was late. The band has a kind of flexible membership and somehow seems to crank out the same great music to entertain us.
Our program for the final dinner called for some “traditional dancing.” That’s something I’ll have in a different post.
While Quasimojo was playing however, we had anything but traditional dance. This pictures shows the international understanding of how to dance to rock and roll though.
IFAJ Congress 2008 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2008 is sponsored by: 
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Pumpkin Seed Oil
A year before the IFAJ Congress 2008 we were given packets of pumpkin seeds to plant and then we were supposed to send in or bring photos of our pumpkin plants. I tried but let’s just say growing pumpkins isn’t one of my things.
We saw lots of pumpkin fields but never got to visit any when we were in Austria. However, at our last dinner we did receive a bottle of pumpkin seed oil.
Now if I could just get home to use it with some new culinary feast.
IFAJ Congress 2008 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2008 is sponsored by: and
Global Marketing on the River
“Rolling on the River” was the theme of the grand opening event this week in St. Louis of AGROTAIN International/Lange-Stegmann’s new stabilized nitrogen production facility and urea storage center. To drive that home, they even had a Tina Turner look-alike to kick off the celebration, which also featured a riverboat themed luncheon.
This company is most definitely on a roll that has a global focus and the river is their highway to the world. Vice President of Global Marketing Jeff Whetstine says they are selling AGROTAIN technology in 68 different countries. “We started here in the United States, expanded to South America and now we’re going around the world,” Jeff says. “It was a regional fertilizer company up until the year 2000 when Lange-Stegmann purchased the AGROTAIN technology and started AGROTAIN International, their subsidiary.”
Jeff says they anticipate rapid growth with the expansion. “Frankly, we’ve had trouble keeping up with the demand for our product and that’s why this stabilized nitrogen center is so important,” he said. “And the Urea Center will help us with the efficiency of bringing urea from around the world to the farmers in the heartland of America and into Canada.”
And that is why the location on the Mississippi River is so strategic for the company. “It’s been a very fortunate thing that we’ve had this location and we are exploiting the advantages of it,” Jeff concluded.
Listen to an interview with Jeff here: agro-jeff.mp3
Fertilizer in the Family
Several members of the Stegmann family are actively involved in the operation of Lange-Stegmann and AGROTAIN International, following in the footsteps of grandfather Henry Lange who started the company with his brother, and father Rich Stegmann who serves as chairman of the company. Rick Stegmann is Operations Manager for the new granulation production facility and urea storage warehouse that opened this week in St. Louis.
Rick explained the river station barge unloading operation portion of the facility. “The majority of urea comes in from New Orleans by barge and St. Louis is the northernmost lock-free, ice-free port on the Mississippi River,” he said. “And so we are able to bring barges up and off load them either into storage, into truck or into rail.”
The operation is extremely efficient, handling in excess of 500 tons an hour. “We can do four barges a day, a barge is average of 1500 tons, so that’s 6,000 tons in 24 hours,” Rick said.
Rick says the new facility is the future of Lange-Stegmann and AGROTAIN International. He attributes the success and longevity of the company to the core values that his grandfather and father instilled in not only the family members involved in the business, but also the rest of the employees, who are treated like family.
Listen to an interview with Rick Stegmann here: agro-rick.mp3
Slovenia Ag Group
While we were in Slovenia at the IFAJ Congress one of our hosts was Ciril Smrkolj who is President of the Slovenia Agriculture and Forestry Chamber, a primary ag group in the country.
I spoke with him at our closing dinner. He’s very much a pro-agriculture kind of guy. He says that his organization does work on promotion and marketing. He says that the globalization of farming has made it difficult for their small farmers. They have to import a lot of the food they eat in their country and he says the transition from communist rule has been a good one but it has opened up their market and that’s what’s causing some problems for them. He says they don’t have enough protection and support from their government either.
You can listen to my interview with Ciril here: ifaj-08-smrkolj.mp3
IFAJ Congress 2008 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2008 is sponsored by: and
Wine Queen of Slovenia
The Wine Queen of Slovenia this year is Svetlana Sirec.
She got quite a bit of attention from the boys here in her wine queen dress, complete with red and white grapes.
I spoke with her at our last dinner of the IFAJ Congress. She basically works to promote wine in country and I wish I could point you to her favorite but I didn’t get her to write it down. Perhaps you can tell when she says it in our interview.
You can listen to my interview with Svetlana here: ifaj-08-svetlana.mp3
IFAJ Congress 2008 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2008 is sponsored by: and
New Agency Forms in KC
Carol Anderson, managing partner and owner of Anderson Fallon Public Relations, and Mark Perrin, president, JLM1926 Holdings, Inc., today announced the creation of Mariposa Partners, Inc., a full-service public relations agency that will provide a full complement of public relations services to help clients communicate in today’s quickly changing business landscape.
The firm, which will operate as an independent subsidiary of JLM1926 Holdings, is located in the Corporate Woods office park in Overland Park, Kan. The agency will continue to service Anderson Fallon’s existing client portfolio. In addition, it will serve as a public relations partner to other JLM1926 agency holdings including McCormick Company, McCormick Global (Canada), The Hondo Group and UNISON Resource Company.
“We believe by combining the expertise, integrity and strategic capabilities of Anderson Fallon with the scope and reach of JLM1926 Holdings, we can deliver meaningful public relations counsel to clients that help them capitalize on their market positions in this time of growth for the agricultural industry and time of challenge in many other industries,” says Perrin.
Mariposa Partners, Inc., will be led by Anderson; Becky Johnson will serve as the new firm’s manager of client services; PR counselors Julie Balmer, Sylvia Bachmann, David Chitwood and Beth Buchanan also will be joining the group.
Food and Farming Canada
The traveling agriblogger is now resting comfortably in Chicago O’Hare, waiting on the next flight. So far, so good this morning. You can see what the sunrise looked like outside my plane in Columbus, OH this morning using this link.
While doing some more email work I noticed that Lilian Schaer, Food and Farming Canada, is now following me on Twitter. That led me to her blog where I read her post about returning from Portoroz, Slovenia and the IFAJ Congress with much sympathy and understanding. If you haven’t done any international travel then you haven’t had some of these kinds of “adventures.” I think those of us who have can, all relate though. Besides blogging away, it looks like Lilian is an excellent Tweeter!
More posts from the IFAJ Congress will be showing up on AgWired in coming days.
Zimfo Bytes
- The National Farmers Union has recognized House Committee on Small Business Chairwoman Nydia M. Velázquez for her leadership on rural small business issues and renewable energy development. She was presented with their 2008 Golden Triangle Award, the highest honor bestowed by this national organization. Chairwoman Velázquez has been honored twice with this distinction awarded annually in recognition of efforts to improve opportunities for rural small firms.
- Hubbard Feeds recently launched a webinar to educate dairy producers on feeding distillers grains to replacement heifers. The webinar is presented by Alvaro Garcia, DVM, MS, PhD, and dairy specialist for South Dakota State University Extension. Topics covered include heifer feeding program objectives, nutritional benchmarks, climate and heifer performance, and using alternative feeds and crop residues in heifer rations. Click here to view this webinar program.
- Novus International Inc. announced that they sustained no flood damage at their Alimet production facility as a result of tidal surges and rain from Hurricane Ike. Novus personnel were evacuated prior to landfall of the storm and there were no injuries.
- Valley Irrigation is introducing the industry’s first line of GPS Ready irrigation control panels. The GPS Ready PRO2 Pivot Control Panel and GPS Ready AutoPilot Linear Control Panel currently are available from Valley dealers. The GPS Ready Select2 Pivot Control Panel will be available later this year.
