I don’t know about you but it can be hard to find good qualified young people who want to enter an agricultural field of any kind today. The folks that run AgCareers.com have introduced a new initiative to do something about it. They’re doing it with a little bit of help too (“a grant from Altria and matching funds from Pioneer Hi-Bred International. Texas A&M University provided the resources for the visual model of the virtual career guide.”).
Weather Channel Blog
This is just a little out of the ordinary for AgWired. Well, maybe not too out of the ordinary. As I was looking at The Weather Channel online to find out the latest about Hurricane Katrina, I noticed they have their own blog! It’s really not too bad and is a good example of what you can do with one. You can meet their bloggers here. And of course you can use this link to subscribe.
Onward To Switzerland
Apparently Thun, Switzerland didn’t look this serene last week as the rain was falling. Little did we know that there was serious flooding until getting an email from the IFAJ organizing committee that our hotels aren’t affected.
Since I just mentioned one commodity group’s new television commercials, why not point out another? According to a story in Not A Blah ZimmCast
In the ZimmCast you can hear my interview with Cindy Cunningham, vice president for communications, National Porkboard, at the recent Ag Media Summit. The “Other White Meat” campaign continues to run with a new addition to the tagline “Don’t be blah.” You can see the full series of tv commercials and listen to the radio ones here.
Announcements From AMVAC
AMVAC Chemical Corporation is a subsidiary of American Vanguard Corporation and they had 2 big announcements this week. To start with they announced receipt of a registration from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Impact™, a new herbicide, for use in field corn, seed corn, sweet corn and popcorn. AMVAC expects to initiate sales of the herbicide to U.S. corn growers beginning in the spring of 2006. Additionally, they announced a partnership with Pioneer Hi-Bred for a marketing program for AMVAC’s SmartBox® closed-handling system. Pioneer® brand seed customers now have the opportunity to qualify for a discount on the purchase of a SmartBox system.
Whoops. We Used The High Fat Oil
Sometimes you see a story and think “Isn’t that just ridiculous?” It happens way too often these days. This one involves McDonalds. According to an AP story on Oregonlive.com, a judge is “allowing” Mickey D’s to conduct an $8.5 million educational campaign to settle a lawsuit brought against the company for failing to reduce its use of partially hydrogenated oil. What is the deal here? Is there some kind of law that I don’t know about that says a company has to use a certain kind of cooking oil? Give me a break!
Meet Alice In Dairyland
If you’ve ever wondered who Alice In Dairyland is then wonder no more. Maybe you’ve never even thought about it either but now you’ll be in the know.
Universal Internet Access By 2007
I know you probably get tired of hearing me talk about farmers and the internet but I think there’s a lot of ag communications folks out there who just aren’t “getting it” yet. In fact, I dare say there’s almost a resistance to using new internet technologies to reach farmers and the ag community. Part of it is a lack of knowledge by the people doing the agrimarketing! That’s why professional development opportunities like NAMA Boot Camp are so important. But I would encourage all agrimarketers to go to other types of professional development opportunities as well.
Cornstalk Baling Advice From Vermeer
The latest news from Vermeer Manufacturing Company was sent out today in the form of a Talking News Release. With all the increase in ethanol use there’s more pressure to bale cornstalks. So the company offers some ideas on how to handle the challenges this creates especially for equipment.