If you’re going to hold a world class customer event why not start with a craft brew festival? Brilliant! That’s what Alltech did yesterday here in Lexington, KY. A thousand beers from 30 countries were featured at this event which was packed with 4,500 fans and early arriving attendees to this week’s 2014 Alltech Symposium. During the festival yesterday Dr. …
Homegrown Farmer Veteran Coalition
Yesterday the Farmer Veteran Coalition announced the national launch of the Homegrown By Heroes initiative. This product labeling program allows farmers, ranchers and fishermen from all 50 states and U.S. territories who have served or are still serving in any branch of the U.S. military the ability to use the logo on their agricultural products. Consumers and businesses purchasing agricultural …
Missouri Cattlemen’s Raffling New Holland Equipment
My good friends at the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association are holding a raffle to win the use of some New Holland equipment, specifically a T6 tractor and Roll-Belt 560 round baler. Tickets are $20/ea. or 3 for $50. A drawing will be held at the MCA Convention on January 3, 2015. You can contact the office to buy tickets. If you …
Rise of the Giants Film Project
While we’re speaking about movies about farming . . . do you know about Rise of the Giants? – A feature-length documentary following the 2013 race to grow the world’s largest pumpkin. This is a Kickstarter project by filmmaker Daria Matza. And she just started following me on Twitter. I’ll let her tell the story about her project, which is …
Dryland Movie
Speaking of movies about farming . . . We were speaking about movies about farming weren’t we? Have you heard of Dryland? I just found it because it just started following me on Twitter. Here’s what I know and I have not seen it. Have you? What do you think? I see that there are showings coming up at the …
Canadian Farm Writers to Dig Deep
I’m going. Going on the bicycling farm tour again too! Although there is a brew tour at the same time. I talked with Kim Waalderbos who serves on this year’s committee for the annual conference of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation. She provides a preview of what this year’s conference will be like. We can’t wait to welcome you to …
Panera Bread and Millennials
How many of you remember the Panera EZChicken campaign? If so, you know that it sparked a social media response from the agriculture community due to the way farmers were portrayed who did not farm the way Panera wants their food ingredients farmed. Panera did issue an apology and you’ll hear another one in this week’s program.
Silent Auction Benefits Interns & Aggies
It’s a familiar sight at a lot of conferences. The silent auction. This one is for the Animal Agriculture Alliance and took place at the Stakeholders Summit About $4,000 were raised this year. There were some great agnerd items like an iPad mini, Mophie phone charger and more. The funds are used to support the AAA summer intern program and …
AAA College Aggies
The Animal Agriculture Alliance presented scholarships to several of the members of the current College Aggies Online group. Last November the Alliance announced the winners of the fall competition. Members of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Association of Women in Agriculture formed the top-scoring club with 229,820 total points, earning $5,000.00. Louisiana State University Les Voyageurs came in second place …
Millennial Staffers on the Hill
The first panel discussion of the 2014 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit focused on millennial staffers on the hill. Moderating the discussion was Chandler Keys, The Keys Group. The panelists each spoke first with ideas for approaching elected officials effectively, especially since the first step is often with a millennial generation staffer like themselves. I selected a quote from each …