Designing Meat Quality Trials

Cindy Zimmerman

Elanco McKeithDesigning trials for a new animal health product to evaluate meat quality is expensive and complicated, according to Dr. Floyd McKeith with the University of Illinois Department of Animal Sciences. He was one of the speakers at a workshop for ag editors this week in Ames, Iowa sponsored by Elanco Animal Health.

According to Dr. McKeith, some of the factors to be considered when designing such a trial include breed type, geographic region, season, yearling versus calf-fed, time on feed, implant history, steers versus heifers, and the diet of the animals. “Ultimately, you want to understand how well that product will perform under a variety of conditions for a variety of producers,” he said.

McKeith says these trials cost companies like Elanco millions of dollars, but most often they go above and beyond what is necessary to make sure their product is safe and effective for the producers, the animals, and consumers.

Listen to my interview with Dr. McKeith here:

mckeith.mp3

Read more on the Beef Quality Center website.

Animal Health, Beef, Elanco

Elanco Sensory Evaluation Workshop

Cindy Zimmerman

Elanco GradyBringing an animal health product to market requires a lot of testing – not just on how that product affects the animal, but also how it affects the meat that comes from that animal.

That’s what a group of farm media folks, including myself, learned about this week at Iowa State University in Ames, courtesy of Elanco Animal Health. Pictured here is Grady Bishop of Elanco giving our group an overview of why we were there, why they were there and what we would be doing. Grady says that since Elanco Animal Health is a participant in the food chain, the main purpose was to provide some perspective for journalists on how they are helping the livestock industry produce safe and healthy food with a focus on quality and consumer satisfaction.

Listen to my interview with Grady here:

grady.mp3

Read more on the Beef Quality Center website.

Animal Health, Beef, Elanco

Buyers of Canadian Grain Concerned About Increased Costs

Harry Siemens

IMG_3942.jpgBy Harry Siemens – The Canadian International Grains Institute reports buyers of Canadian IMG_3920.jpggrain, both international and domestic, are expressing concern over increasing costs.

With the North American ethanol industry growing so rapidly, the grains industry has found it difficult to keep up with demand for both grain for fuel and grain for livestock.

CIGI Director of Feed, Dr. Rex Newkirk says the ethanol demand is driving up corn prices dramatically prompting the livestock industry to move to byproducts and other grains like barley pushing up barley prices causing the concern.

“There are always winners and losers in everything that happens and right now we’re in a fortunate position where farmers are gaining value out of the grains because of the ethanol industry,” says Newkirk.Read More

International

USDA/FSA 1614 Database Available on Your Farm

Chuck Zimmerman

Your FarmI know I just wrote about the introduction of Your Farm but this is a separate story. Joel Jaeger at Your Farm has made a complete farm subsidy database available that’s easily searchable. You can find out why here.

With the launch of Your Farm, the company has produced the first online publishing of the USDA/Farm Service Agency (FSA) 1614 Database.

Previously published farm subsidy information has provided payment information that often stopped at the Partnership or other entity level. In contrast, the 1614 Database discloses payment information with specific attribution to the individual who received the payment. The information was released publicly by the FSA on December 19, 2006, but has not been available online until now.

“Any time we get a new look on data like this I think it is really important, not only for farmers but for the non-farm person,” said National Corn Growers Association President Ken McCauley when asked his opinion on the matter. “I think it would be good for farmers to visit Your Farm –to compare it and see if the farmer is portrayed in a better way. The non-farm public needs to be able to understand the real value of farm support. The way data has been compiled in the past has not always been in our favor.”

Echoing this perspective, Joel Jaeger added, “Historically, payment data has been published by lobbying organizations who have often presented the data in ways that support their agendas. We know there are many who have well founded perspectives that differ from those propagated by these groups and our objective at Your FarmSM is to provide a venue for those views to be expressed.”

Agribusiness

NAFB Rural Lifestyle Report Webinar

Chuck Zimmerman

NAFB Rural Lifestyle SurveyIf you’re interested in reaching the rural lifestyle folks (who isn’t?) then the National Association of Farm Broadcasting has a webinar they’d like you to participate in. The NAFB Rural Lifestyle Report Webinar will feature information about their latest study on this subject.

Date: Thursday, June 7
Time: 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. Central Time

There is no need to register, but we would like to know if you plan on joining the June 7 Webinar.

You can RSVP for this event to jeremy@nafb.com. Please respond by June 1.

Please contact the NAFB office for specific details about how to participate.

NAFB

It’s Time For Your Farm

Chuck Zimmerman

Your FarmLet me introduce you to Your Farm. I know that if you have a farm it’s your farm but now there’s a new online destination that’s being developed for farmers that’s all about farmers. This is a very cool concept and one I think you should pay attention to. ZimmComm New Media is going to be a charter sponsor and we’re already working on how we integrate information into the site working with founder Joel Jaeger. You may remember Joel from his Commodity Update launch last year. Well Commodity Update is doing very well delivering commodity markets to farmers via text messages. Now he’s taking the next step to create an online community for farmers to interact with each other.

As Joel says about Your Farm on the site, it’s “An online community, integrating the knowledge and experience of farmers everywhere to bring you a resource unlike anything available today. We call it Your Farm. Because in the end that’s what matters.”

You can listen to an interview with Joel that was conducted by reporter Mike Rogers here: your-farm-jaeger-5-16-07.mp3

The new online farmer community destination is in it’s final development stages but Joel decided to go ahead and announce it to start building awareness and so that potential charter sponsors can take a first look at that site. Think MySpace for farmers. That’s what we’re talking about. Farmers will be able to sign up and participate for free and companies wanting to have a branded presence in the community are welcome to initiate a discussion on how to make that happen.

Built upon the central tenant of serving and looking out for the farmer, Your Farm Inc., a new online community designed for production agriculture, launched today. Building on the success of social networks in other industries, Your Farm is a destination where producers, agribusinesses, professors, agri-marketers, grower associations, and members of the farm media can interact, contribute and benefit. The Company was developed to be a resource for those who spend their lives in and around production agriculture.

Agribusiness, Internet

Jay Leno and the National Biodiesel Board

Chuck Zimmerman

Joe Jobe, Jay Leno and Michelle JobeIt sure takes a long time to get back from the coast, especially the west coast with the time difference. But I’m back and working on catch up.

Here’s Jay Leno with Joe Jobe and his wife Lisa. We had a great time with Jay at his garage. I was impressed with how open and relaxed Jay was. He took all the time we wanted for pictures and even to just chat. We (Joe/Lisa, Gene Hemphill and myself) were there so that Jay could record a video segment for his Jay Leno’s Garage. He started out the segment talking about his New Holland tractor and then spent a while talking with Joe about biodiesel. When the segment is published I’ll let you know. They said it should be sometime within the next few weeks.

I have uploaded a selection of my photos of the event for you. I couldn’t take pictures of Jay’s collector cars but you can see and read about them on his website.

Jay Leno’s Garage Videotaping Photo Album

Ag Groups, Biodiesel, New Holland

Talking Biodiesel and Tractors With Jay Leno

Chuck Zimmerman

Interviewing Jay LenoI think every guy in America would like to have a Jay Leno Garage. I got to tour his garage which is fully functional to do everything, including body work on his collector cars. After that and the taping of his show yesterday I got to interview him.

I’m here to work with the National Biodiesel Board and New Holland doing photography and of course some interviews. Jay has a New Holland Boomer tractor in his garage to move cars around and he’s got a prototype car built that runs on 100% biodiesel. You’ll hear him talk about the EcoJet as it’s called in my interview with him. He says it’s the perfect vehicle for the harvest season.

I asked Jay what he thinks about this home grown fuel and he can’t be more supportive. To him it just makes sense to develop a fuel source we can grow ourselves and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

I’ll have more information about the whole event for you as soon as I have time to do some editing and posting. Today is a travel day back home.

Listen to my interview with Jay Leno here:

jay-leno-garage-07-leno.mp3
Ag Groups, Audio, Biodiesel, New Holland

Harry Siemens from Canada is Back with his observations

Harry Siemens

IMG_3942.jpgHarry Siemens – I’m so happy to be back posting to this website and work with Chuck Zimmerman. It’s been busy working with the my own website www.SiemensSays.Com and getting the number of people reading it into real positive numbers. I’m from Canada, but live only ten minutes from the North Dakota border in Winkler, Manitoba.

This has always given me a different perspective on things between our two countries. Sometimes producers on one side of the border don’t always agree with what happens on the other side, but my message to producers on both sides of the border is that we have far bigger enemies than each other. There are those who would like to see us do away with animal agriculture and meat production as we know of it today. There are those who would like to use the environment to stifle food production and the likes. We need to point our weapons at those collective enemies and work for the common good as food producers, feeding the world with the safest, healthiest, and cheapest food around.

Here is my daily audio commentary….

International

Ringing The CBOT Bell

Chuck Zimmerman

CBOT Floor in ActionHave you ever been to the floor of the CBOT? It’s a madhouse. More so than I remember. This picture doesn’t do it justice but then flash photography was not allowed. I’ve got to convince Cindy to let me invest in a low light lens!

I was there for the ceremonial ringing of the bell with Jeff Simmons as the guest on the platform. This is a very short sound file which will give you the flavor of what it sounds like each and every trading day.

CBOT ringing of the bell:

cbot-07-bell.mp3
Agribusiness, Audio