Spring is officially here, at least by the calendar, and Midwest farmers are preparing for a new year with the 2012 drought in the rearview mirror and a new BASF Crop Protection fungicide that combines two powerful active ingredients into the most advanced chemistry ever developed for a range of products, including soybeans. During the 2013 Commodity Classic, BASF was …
Soybean Registration for BASF Zidua Herbicide
There’s a new class of chemistry available now for soybean growers to help fight resistant weeds, including Palmer amaranth and waterhemp. BASF’s Crop Protection division is pleased to announce federal registration of Zidua® herbicide in soybeans. According to 10 years of research and field trials, the residual weed control provided by Zidua herbicide lasts up to two weeks longer than …
Senate Spending Bill Saves Meat Inspectors
The U.S. Senate yesterday passed a continuing budget resolution that would keep the federal government operating through the end of the fiscal year on September 30th and keep meat inspectors off the chopping block. The Senate unanimously passed an amendment introduced by Senators Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) to the Continuing Resolution (CR) solves a funding gap for …
Meet the AgFanatics
We’ve been promoting the AgriVisor AgFanatics podcast for a couple of months now here on AgWired and I finally got a chance to get the two hosts of the show on the phone to find out more about them. The AgFanatics are AgriVisor Account Manager Cory Winstead and AgriVisor Risk Management Specialist Nick Klump and they started the podcast back …
Colorful Way Shows How BASF Herbicide Works
During the recent “Science Behind BASF” event, Senior Biologist Dr. Chad Brommer gave an infrared imaging demonstration to assess Engenia™ herbicide, a technologically advanced dicamba formulation developed by BASF. Chad explains that they wanted a quantitative way to measure the safety and effectiveness of Engenia. “What we see with the camera is often things we can’t see with the human …
Media Bias in Animal Ag Story
Fox News loves to point out media bias in mainstream reporting on politics in particular, but probably not when it comes to agriculture. Fox carried an AP story over the weekend about state bills seeking to make it more difficult for animal rights activists to go undercover at agricultural operations to get video of abuse and sometimes hold it for …
New USDA Rural Definition Stirs Controversy
A guest post by Agri-Pulse Editor Sara Wyant A proposed definition of the term “rural” submitted by the Department of Agriculture to Congress last month could have broad implications for small towns across America and not everyone is happy about it. The report, delivered two and one half years late after it was required by Congress to be delivered by …
USDA Deputy Secretary Resigns – Update
*UPDATED with Merrigan statement* Call it kind of a surprise – the announcement late yesterday that USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan has resigned her position. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack released the following statement about Merrigan’s resignation: “USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan has helped USDA achieve record results over the past four years. She has played a vital role in the Department-wide …
Bringing Sexy Back to Agriculture
The take home theme of the Bayer CropScience Ag Issues Forum this year came to be “bringing sexy back to agriculture.” Which begs the question – when was agriculture sexy before? If sexy means sustainable, here are a couple of pretty sexy farmers. On the left is the Bayer CropScience 2013 Young Farmer Sustainability Award winner Jeremy Jack of Mississippi …
BASF Spotlights Science Behind Successful Growers
BASF Ag Products spotlighted a couple of very successful and innovative farmers during the Science Behind event prior to Commodity Classic this year. One of them is pretty familiar to us all but the other is a newer face on the farming scene. The new kid on the block is Randy Dowdy of Georgia who just got into the farming …