One of the big announcements here at the show on opening day was from Bunge and Dupont who have a biotech alliance. Basically they’ve created a new brand, “Treus.” This is being done to “reflect their expansion of the companies’ soy collaboration beyond food and nutrition products to include industrial applications, biofuels and other opportunities.”
Late Day Views
You’ll find the sky over the show filled with advertising at times. We’ve got balloons like this one for Ag Leader Technology. They look a lot better in the sunshine. In addition to balloons we’ve got little lightweight sail planes (?) too. I couldn’t quite make out who this is for. If you know, post a comment. I got a …
Street Scene
Here’s the current street scene here at Farm Progress.
It may seem like I haven’t gotten far away from the media tent yet. That’s because I haven’t. Besides pouring rain all morning I’m now waiting for the mud to settle down so I don’t do a disgraceful fall with my equipment hanging off me.
Golf Cart Demand Is High
The golf carts are in high demand here this morning. I wonder how much they’re getting for them today.
Get A Premium For Your Corn
while it was raining this morning the media was nicely cooped up in the media tent. I’m sure this didn’t disappoint Monsanto since they had the first press conference. One of the their representatives I met was Steve Peterson, Monsanto business manager for their Processor Preferred program. Steve’s pictured here during an interview with WITY. In my interview with Steve he describes how this program has developed about 90 varieties of corn that are yielding up to 2 to 4 percent more ethanol per bushel than conventional hybrids. He says this helps corn growers get a premium for their crops.
Debunking The Food vs. Fuel Myth
The incoming 1st Vice President of the National Corn Growers Association is Ron Litterer, Greene, IA. I talked to Ron about the impact of using more and more corn for fuel and what his thoughts are on the issue of how that affects other uses of the commodity. Ron’s being interviewed here by Tom Steever of Brownfield Ag News.
Show Entrance
We just heard the raindrops start falling here in the media tent.
Maybe you can see in this picture that it is a little muddy out. Hopefully this rain will be brief, drain off and then things will dry up.
Opening Day
It’s opening day here at the Farm Progress Show. Kelcy and I are getting set up and she’s waiting on her first interview. She’ll be covering the first press conference of the day which is being conducted by our sponsor, Monsanto.
Media Tent Man
The media tent at Farm Progress Show is sponsored by New Holland and the media tent man is Gene Hemphill.
Gene just got in so I got him to talk about what he does here after he tested out the microphone on the press conference podium. Gene says that this will be his 19th media room sponsorhip for Farm Progress Show but that he actually did a media room sponsorship for a show here at Amana Colonies the year before. You’ll have to listen to the interview to hear him talk about the first years when they put typewriters out with reams of paper.
Monsanto Show Staff Meeting
I think Kelcy and I are going to have our hands full covering all the activities planned by Monsanto, our sponsor.
They’ve got a large exhibit and we’re going to learn more about the new things they have to offer over the next several days, along with coverage of as much of the show as we can.