Sustainability is an overused term, according to Nevin McDougall, Senior VP for BASF Crop Protection, North America. “Getting more productivity, more efficiency, with less impact on our resources and our environment – that’s what it’s all about,” Nevin told me at the conclusion of the 2012 BASF Agricultural Solutions Media Summit in Chicago last week. Nevin was very pleased with …
Zimfo Bytes
The “Stand and Be Heard Anthem Singing Contest” by FMC has a new deadline of July 15. An Israeli scientist who pioneered a radically innovative way of bringing water to crops in arid and dry-land regions was named the winner of the 2012 World Food Prize. Gibbs & Soell, Inc. has launched a new Business Consulting practice that will focus …
You Twive & AgChat Foundation Received
Thank you to everyone who helped out the AgChat Foundation during yesterday’s Twive and Receive event. We raised $6,830 and placed 12th out of the hundreds of charities that participated. I guess I should have titled this “You Twave & AgChat Foundation Received?” We had 78 Twivers for an average donation of $88. In case you couldn’t help out now …
Help Feed the World with GROWMARK Cookbook
GROWMARK employees have created a cookbook to help a group focused on feeding the world. In celebration of the International Year of Cooperatives, GROWMARK has announced that proceeds from sales of a new cookbook will go to Farmers Feeding the World, an industry-wide campaign to rally North American agriculture in the war against hunger. GROWMARK System employees and friends submitted …
Few Ag Names on Dot Domain List
There’s no dots for agriculture, corn, or cows on the list of nearly 2000 new generic top-level domain (or gTLD) name applications announced yesterday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). There’s .beer but not .beef, there’s .porn but not .pork, there’s .soy but not .soybean. There is .farm on the list, by one of several companies …
2012 IFAJ Congress Full
If you were waiting to make reservations for the 2012 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress then you waited too long. It’s full! I’m looking forward to a trip to Sweden later this year thanks to our good friends at Pioneer Hi-Bred. The Swedish Congress is now completely full. All the available rooms at the congress hotel Sånga-Säby are booked …
President Exec Order To Speed Up Broadband Dev
Today President Obama will sign a new executive order to make broadband construction cheaper and easier according to the White House. This would mean more people in more places can join the AgWired community! The Executive Order (EO) will require the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs as well as the US Postal Service to offer …
Soft and Plush
This week, one of our neighbors combined his wheat fields and this is the stubble that’s left. From the road it looks like butter. Or yellow cotton candy. Like running my fingers through a little chick’s peach fuzz. It’s wheat stubble though, so I’m sure it’s not soft and plush. I wanted to write about wheat because in our area, …
Looking at the Future of Farmers
How the world’s farmers will handle feeding the projected 9 billion people the earth is expected to have by 2050 … and where those farmers to feed that hoard will come from … was the subject of a presentation to the BASF Agricultural Solutions Media Summit in Chicago last week. Christophe Pelletier, futurist and president of Happy Future Group, told …
Split Vote on Corn Sugar vs. HFCS
Our latest ZimmPoll asked the question, “Do you prefer corn sugar to high fructose corn syrup?” In what is a first for our poll, the response was split evenly! See the chart below. Recently the FDA denied a request from the Corn Refiners Association to allow food labels to use the term corn sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. …