Brad Greenway of South Dakota was named 2016 Pig Farmer of the Year by the National Pork Board recognizing him as a pig farmer who excels at raising pigs using the industry’s We Care ethical principles that include not only raising pigs humanely and safely, but also promoting a safe workplace and contributing to the local community. Right after he …
Meet the Company Building Farms in Parking Structures
Stuart Oda previously worked as an investment banker before serving as a co-founder of Alesca Life, a Beijing-based agriculture technology company that builds weather-proof, cloud-connected farms in order to enable local food production by anyone, anywhere. “We’ve developed technology for indoor farming, so it allows farmers to work in an environment that is far safer, cleaner, and closer to the …
Deere Intros More Efficient Headers
Along with the new S700 Combines for 2018, John Deere is introducing the 700C/FC Series Corn Heads and 700D Drapers for more efficient grain harvesting. The 700C/FC (folding corn head) Series Corn Heads with the RowMax™ row unit provides up to a 50 percent increase in the life of the row unit gathering chains and features solid-alloy bushings that reduce …
John Deere Rolls Out Smarter S700 Combines
John Deere is hosting agricultural media today at their harvester headquarters in Moline, Illinois – an appropriate place to unveil a smarter line of grain harvesting technology in the combines and headers John Deere is introducing for model year 2018 production. This includes four new S700 Combine models (S760, S770, S780 and S790) that offer producers significant improvements in “smart” …
Iowa Gov and Ag Groups to Make China Trip
Iowa’s new governor and the state’s agricultural organizations miss Terry Branstad so much that they are already planning a trip to see him in China. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds will lead an all-Iowa agriculture trade mission to China July 19-28 with representatives from the state’s corn, pork, soy, beef, egg, poultry, dairy and turkey industries. The trip marks the first …
Growing Up Lyons
Dr. Mark Lyons was a young boy in 1980 when his father, Dr. Pearse Lyons, started Alltech with an investment of $10,000. Today, the global animal health company employs more than 4700 people with a presence in 128 countries, including the rapidly growing Chinese market where Mark is based as global vice president for the company. The youngest Dr. Lyons …
Another NAMA 60 Year Perspective
Another active member of the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) who has been around for at least two-thirds of the organization’s 60 years is Carroll Merry of Countryside Marketing. Carroll has been a member of NAMA since November 1976 and in our reminiscing interview he talks about how NAMA started – and definitively solves the question of how it should be …
MagGrow Brings Innovation to Crop Protection
After three years of developing products, founding member and CEO of MagGrow, Gary Wickham became part of the Pearse Lyons Accelerator just as they were ready to bring their solutions to growers. It was Wickham’s brother who discovered the need that was the mother of this invention. While working in Florida he saw serious flaws with pesticide spray. As a …
Bringing Smart Farming to Aquaculture
Farmers across the livestock production sectors have begun to have increased access to smart farming technology on their operations, including the booming global aquaculture industry. Rully Setya Purnama is the Chief Operating Officer of eFishery, a company offering integrated feeding solution for fish and shrimp farming that allows operators to control their fish/shrimp feeding performance directly from a smartphone or …
SkySquirrel Leaps Ahead in Aerial Imaging
When Richard van der Put looked at the potential for his drone company, SkySquirrel Technologies, he found a niche in vineyards, but he also found a niche with his software. “What you see in the market is, obviously, drones are being utilized more and more by farmers, but all of our competitors are basically using the same technology on the …