I’ve been collecting news releases from various agricultural companies and organizations that are working to provide help to people impacted by Hurricane Katrina. There’s a lot and I think it shows how helpful Americans are, especially those involved in the food chain! There’s no way to post all of the various efforts but I’ll try to summarize what I have so far. I know there’s much more going on out there. Feel free to add to this post using the comment feature if you know of more.
New CEO For COLT Technologies
I’m sure you’re tired of IFAJ news and information by now so it’s on to other things. For example, COLT Technologies(TM), a Salt Lake City-based developer of wireless agricultural technologies, has appointed D. Bret Smith as its new chief executive officer. Smith replaces Tali Haleua who has assumed the role of executive vice president of sales and business development and will remain with COLT as chairman of the board.
New Website For MachineryLink
Another company announces a website revamp. I am not on high speed here in the airport so I only got a short time to look at the new MachineryLink website. It looks pretty simple and “clean.” By clean I mean uncluttered with too many images and other stuff. I like the fact that you can listen to interviews in the news section!! They ought to consider an RSS feed of their releases though. Ag communications people need to listen up on this! If you wonder what I mean just give me a call and I can even set it up for you.
A John Deere New Equipment Onslaught
Wow! When John Deere comes out with some new equipment they don’t mess around. I have about 16 news releases on new products introduced at the just-completed product launch in Ft. Worth, TX. In the interest of time we’ll kind of provide an overview. Remember each of these has it’s own release and you can find out more on their website. First we have the Frontier Equipment announcements.
Web Check AgForLife
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.”).
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.
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.
New D&PL Website
D&PL have announced a new website design. The work was done by Brighton Agency in St. Louis. It would be tempting to critique it here and I’m wondering if you’d like me to offer critques. Let me know by way of feedback.
Over 5,000 Convenience Stores In Shanghai
I always thought the corner convenience store was really just an American thing but after travelling in other countries you realize that’s not the case. I just came across a story on China Daily about the huge growth in convenience stores in Shanghai. According to the story there are now over 5,000 of them! That’s since they got started about 10 years ago.
AGCO & NASCAR Put Agriculture In High Gear
Actually their headline was that Challenger, Caterpillar and NASCAR Put . . . but my title space only has so much room.