Keynote speaker Dr. Newell Kitchen, USDA-ARS, had a unique title to his presentation, “From Poking Holes to Precision Sensing: Options Growing for Nutrient Management.” He wanted to be clear that the options available to farmers today for managing nutrients are growing. He started out with a historical perspective on what has taken place in this area in recent years. One …
Remote Sensing Still Developing
The first of the two keynote speakers at the International Conference on Precision Agriculture is Dr. David Mulla, University of Minnesota. Dr. Mulla is a past chair of the conference btw. His topic was “Key Advances and Remaining Knowledge Gaps in Remote Sensing for Precision Agriculture.” So he talked about what we know and what we don’t know. It’s clear …
11th International Conference on Precision Agriculture
There are precision agriculture enthusiasts from 45 countries attending the 11th International Conference on Precision Agriculture. This conference is held every two years and is taking place in Indianapolis, IN. To learn about what’s new for this year’s conference I spoke with Dr. Rajiv Khosla, Colorado State University, who is the President of the International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA), …
Go Bold With Butter
Are you bold enough to go with butter? “Go Bold With Butter” is a social media campaign of the American Butter Institute. Here’s how it’s doing. Note the results correlation between increased content on their blog and “fostering increased butter usage.” How about that blogging thing! ABI’s social media campaign “Go Bold With Butter” was launched on March 19th, just …
FMC Stand & Be Heard Singing Contest Update
During the FMC Anthem Field Plot Tour this week I spoke with Rick Ekins, Product Manager, to get an update on the FMC Anthem Stand & Be Heard Singing Contest. There are only two days left to enter the contest. Rick is seen while we were out in the field during the demonstration portion of the tour. I think we …
FMC Anthem Field Plot Tour
FMC is holding a series of Anthem Field Plot Tours around the midwest. I had the opportunity to attend the event in Ames, IA this week. To find out what we were going to learn I spoke with BJ Fuhrman, Retail Marketing Manager for FMC. To start with, the event brings in retailers from across the state to learn about …
Wyffels Corn Brings Efficiency to Harmon Farm
The Wyffels Corn Strategies event held at Harmon Farms had four generations of Harmon family on hand. Here’s the family receiving a gift of appreciation for allowing the event to be held on their farm by Bill Wyffels, President. I spoke with Sean Harmon, pictured behind the little cutie in the middle. Sean is the 4th generation on the farm …
AGROTAIN SuperU to the Rescue
The extreme dry weather in the midwest was very evident at this week’s Indian Creek Watershed Project Field Tour. Out in the corn fields we had a nice breeze, but that breeze was blowing a lot of dust! On our first stop, Martin Case, AGROTAIN, was a presenter. This is the second year of this tour and we’ve gone from …
Mobile Farm Manager App From John Deere
How about managing your farm operation from your iPad or Iphone? John Deere plans to make that happen later this year. Tyler Hogrefe, seen here being interviewed by Ken Anderson, Brownfield Ag News, is a Product Manager for John Deere in their Intelligent Solutions Group. He was a presenter at their FarmSight Tech Summit. I spoke to him about John …
Corn Market Commentary
Corn growers got the world market viewpoint today at the Wyffels Hybrids Corn Strategies from Bill Tierney, Chief Economist, AgResource Company. I spoke with him after his presentation. China was a market he spoke about and I was fascinated to learn that the average holding of corn there is about 10-12 feet wide by about 60-100 feet! Bill says, “When …