As much as I dislike Oprah for her animosity towards agriculture and food production, I took note of her show last Friday the 13th. The segment was titled, “The Face Behind Facebook,” and Oprah interviewed founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the social networking site’s success. With 175 million users, this project that started in a Harvard dormitory, has quickly …
Marketing Techniques, Past and Present
I was on the road last week for Spring Break, and I spent some time in the secluded Black Hills in Western South Dakota. If you have never vacationed there, I highly recommend it. You will have the opportunity to explore the Badlands, Black Hills and Spearfish Canyon. Test your luck at Deadwood, hike to see Roughlock Falls, salute our …
USDA Recovery Act Website
Here’s where you can find information on how USDA is involved in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. USDA was appropriated $28 billion (3.5 percent) of the package. The Act: * Provides $19.7 billion to increase the monthly amount of nutrition assistance to 31.8 million people. * Enables expanded opportunities for broadband loans and grants to rural communities. …
Secretary Vilsack Agriculture Week PSA
Our Secretary of Agriculture has recorded a public service message to highlight National Agriculture Week. You can listen to it here: vilsack-agweek-psa.mp3 The picture is Secretary Vilsack with Cookie Monster and Broccoli at the National WIC Association and Sesame Workshop Partnership conference. I like it.
Agriculture Week According To The Chairman
Welcome to Ag Week and the ZimmCast. This week we’re all about celebrating American agriculture and thanking our farmers and ranchers who feed and fuel the world. In this week’s program I spoke with Greg Webb, ADM, who is currently Chairman of the Agriculture Council of America. He says the purpose of this week and National Agriculture Day on March …
Social Networking/Blogging Now 4th Most Popular Online Activity
That’s a long headline but it pretty much sums up Nielsen’s latest report, “Global Faces and Networked Places” (pdf). I like the way they describe it as a “global footprint.” We are communicating online globally now in ways you couldn’t imagine ten years ago and that certainly includes agriculture. Here’s some tidbits: . . . the global media and advertising …
Zimfo Bytes
The USDA has granted a conditional license to Epitopix, LLC for America’s first E. coli O157 vaccine for cattle. Farm Journal Media announced that the company is re-aligning its sales structure — national account managers will now represent all Farm Journal Media products to the crop and livestock markets. Farm Journal Media also announced the addition of a new national …
Celebrating National Ag Week
National Ag Week has started. It’s a week long celebration of American agriculture. Actually, the big day is Friday which is the first day of spring and National Agriculture Day. Here’s some good information from the Agriculture Council of America. World Population Growth Is Creating Needs For Food And Fiber * World population is at 6.2 billion today, and is …
Agricultural Relations Council Mtg.
It sounds like the ARC annual meeting has gone very well in New Orleans. Thanks to Mace Thornton, AFBF, I got some notes about the meeting to share. Here’s what he says: An aggressive plan in place to rebuild the organization and grow membership. Now have Den Gardner managing (have not had professional management for the last 3-4 years so …
A Few Thoughts On Global Warming
I don’t know why I let things like the global warming hoax bother me but sometimes . . . It seems like lately I’ve been hearing and seeing more “news” coverage of this subject. For a while last year the term changed to “climate change” when a number of stories came out from weather reporting stations and actual meteorologists and …