One of the great aspects of the InfoAg Conference is company-to-company communications and partnerships for the benefit of farmers. We talked with Kevin Krieg, John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group Product Line Manager, about how important it is to work with other companies. “It’s one of the biggest roadblocks to being able to get more adoption of precision technologies – the …
Corn Based Craft Beer
Plato is quoted as saying “He was a wise man who invented beer.” With craft beers all the rage now, a wise brewery is taking a second look at corn as a main ingredient. Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, Maryland calls its new brew Agave Cerveza. Our latest Brewhouse Rarities release, Agave Cerveza, is the artisanal answer to the easy-drinking, …
Ann Bares: What Really Matters with Reward & Retention
Have you ever wondered if throwing money at your employees as rewards and retention strategies are really working? Well wonder no more – they don’t. The attendees of the AgCareers.com annual 2014 HR & Food Roundtable learned what some better strategies were for reward and retention from Ann Bares with Altura Consulting Group. Here presentation focused on Reward and Retention: …
USDA Predicts Record Corn and Soybean Crops
A little bit more corn and a lot more soybeans compared to last year is what USDA is forecasting in the latest report out today. U.S. soybean producers are expected to produce a record 3.82 billion bushels in 2014, up 16 percent from last year according to the Crop Production report issued today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National …
Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy
This is the first of a four part series on Nutrient Management sponsored by FS/GROWMARK In March of 2013, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency hosted a meeting of stakeholders to announce the beginning of a statewide Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Marcia Willhite, chief of the Illinois EPA Bureau of Water, says the first step in implementing this strategy was to get …
WD Farr Scholarship Winners
Congratulations to two young agricultural professionals who were awarded the WD Farr Scholarship during the 2014 Cattle Industry Summer Conference. Ariel Overstreet-Adkins from Big Timber, Montana and Josh Ison from Batavia, Ohio were honored at the first session by the National Cattlemen’s Foundation and the Farr family. They each received a $12,000 graduate scholarship. Ariel will use it to finish …
SPADE Digs into Data Sharing
Many booths at the recent InfoAg Conference sported this little sign: AgGateway – SPADE Participant. We caught up with AgGateway Standards Director Jim Wilson at the John Deere booth to learn more about the SPADE project. “SPADE stands for Standardized Precision Ag Data Exchange,” Wilson explained. As a non-profit industry consortium, AgGateway is facilitating the project which will ultimately benefit …
Zimfo Bytes
The NC Biotechnology Center’s AgBiotech Initiative and NC State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are combining their signature events for this NOT TO BE MISSED two day conference in Raleigh at the McKimmon Conference Center. GROWMARK is pleased to welcome three employees into new roles within the Agronomy Services Department. DuPont Pioneer announced that Neal Gutterson, Ph.D., will …
Join the #RealPigFarming Conversation
I sat down with Cindy Cunningham of the National Pork Board and talked with her about the new campaign they’ve launched called #RealPigFarming. The campaign takes place on major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and its aim is to educate the general public on the pork industry. “So those real pig farmers – from their barns, from their …
Farmer Veteran Coalition to Hold Stakeholders Conference
Organizations that support military veterans pursuing food, farming, and agricultural careers will gather in November to hold a stakeholders conference. The event will be hosted by the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC), in coordination with the Drake University Agricultural Law Center (ALC), November 14-15, 2014 at Drake University Olmsted Center in Des Moines, Iowa. The conference is being held to “empower …