U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue set the stage for his boss and our President Donald J. Trump to address the largest general farm organization in the country Monday. Perdue highlighted accomplishments of the Trump Administration related to agriculture and discussed the importance of trade and NAFTA in particular to U.S. agriculture. “To get a deal, we need all sides …
Farm Bureau Excels at Instant Convention Content
The communications team for the American Farm Bureau Federation is really getting a workout for the organization’s 99th annual meeting in Nashville this week with President Donald Trump attending Monday afternoon. Over 200 registered media and room for only 90, having last minute convention schedule changes, and just dealing with the logistics of a presidential presence will make Monday a …
SMART Farmer Podcast 2018
Welcome to the first SMART farmer podcast of 2018! In 2017, we interviewed 22 farmers and ranchers and other agriculture industry people from across the country for the SMART farmer podcast to learn how they use the latest technology in their production of food and fiber for the world, like poultry barns with environmental controls on smart phones, using GPS …
John Deere Reaps AE50 Awards
John Deere S700 Combines, CP690 & CS690 Cotton Harvesters have been honored with AE50 Awards for innovations that improve production ag. The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) AE50 Awards highlight the year’s most innovative product-engineering designs in the food and agriculture industry, as chosen by a panel of international engineering experts. The John Deere S700 Series Combine …
Agrilyst’s 2017 State of Indoor Farming Report
We first met Allison Kopf, founder and CEO of Agrilyst, at Alltech’s 2017 ONE. There she took part in the first Pearse Lyons Accelerator program. As a reminder, Agrilyst is a “web-based software platform that helps indoor farms manage their crops and gain data-driven insights to make more profitable production decisions.” Allison and her team have now released a 2017 …
2017 in Pictures
2017 is just a memory now, so we compiled some of our favorite photos from the 50 events we attended this year so you can relive it! This album includes some of our favorite shots of the year, our favorite people, and some of the many inductees into the Golden Mic Club. There’s only 200 out of more than 10,500 …
Precision Ag Bytes 1/3
AgJunction Inc., a leader in automated steering and machine control technology for precision agriculture, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Western District of Texas against Raven Industries, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that Raven products violate three AgJunction patents related to automated mechanical steering, implement steering and system calibration technologies. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and an injunction to …
Precision Ag Bytes 12/27
NRGene, the worldwide leader in genomic assembly and analysis, is working with a team of researchers from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands and leading commercial partners to create multi-genome mapping of commercial food potatoes. The potato genome is complex. It’s an auto-tetraploid, which means that each potato cell contains four nearly identical copies of each chromosome and gene, …
Soybean Growers Lose $1.6 Billion Annually to SCN and SDS
Diseases like Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) and Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) continue to plague soybean growers to the tune of $1.6 billion per year, based on USDA 2016–2017 marketing year projection for average soybean price of $9.10 per bushel. Those two diseases contribute to the largest number of bushels lost for soybean farmers, who sometimes don’t even realize disease is …