The head owl himself, Dr. Steve Brown, National FFA Advisor, took the stage to issue a challenge to all FFA members across the country during the opening session of the 2015 National FFA Convention. He asked members if they were readying to change the world of agriculture. Native to the state of Missouri, Dr. Brown is an avid Kansas City …
Tyler Watkins – How Do You #SpeakAg?
Scattered throughout the New Holland booth at the 88th National FFA Convention are cutouts of the Pennsylvania FFA Officers. New Holland asked them how they #SpeakAg and advocate for the agriculture community. First I spoke with Tyler Watkins, Pennsylvania FFA Vice President, who has aspirations of soon beginning a career in ag law with the mission to provide a better …
Connecting with the Future of Ag
Connecting with the future of the agricultural industry is what brings the New Holland crew to the National FFA Convention each year. Mark Lowery works in marketing for New Holland and he shared with me what students swarming their booth can get out of the experience. “Visitors to the New Holland booth will be able to take advantage of some …
National FFA Officers #AmplifyFFA
The 88th National FFA Convention & Expo is in full swing and the streets of Louisville, KY are flooded with corduroy jackets. This week the lives of the National FFA Officers are crazy to say the least, but I had a chance to chat with two of them this morning before the organized chaos got too deep. Nearly 365 days …
Agri-Pulse Open Mic with Sen. Kent Conrad
Agri-Pulse Open Mic this week features Sen. Kent Conrad. As a former Chair of the Senate Budget Committee the North Dakota Democrat is well versed on the country’s challenging fiscal policy. In this week’s interview Senator Conrad discusses the appropriations deadline, the debate over the debt ceiling, the advantages to a two-year budget and secure long term funding for the …
Total Factor Productivity Can Increase with Precision Ag
Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a way to measure outputs versus inputs and the key tool of the annual GAP Report produced by the Global Harvest Initiative. This year’s report, “Global Agricultural Productivity Report: Building Sustainable Breadbaskets,” was released during World Food Prize and John Deere’s Kelly Winquist provided a preview of how countries are doing with TFP. “So its …
Ag Biologicals Can Play Starring Role in Productivity
Colin Bletsky, Vice President of BioAg, Novozymes was a participate in the panel discussion following the 2015 Gap Report release during World Food Prize. In an interview, he says that Novozymes came on board with Global Harvest Initiative because the company has a mission to help develop sustainable technologies. Bletsky is also passionate about this mission in his role as …
John Deere Int’l Mobile Training Unit Sees Success
During the during the World Food Prize I had the opportunity to learn about a new mobile training unit pilot program from Geoff Andersen, director, Global Citizenship and Strategic Planning with John Deere. The unit was first used in Ghana and Kenya to help more than 60,000 farmers learn how to increase productivity. Andersen was in country to work with …
New Zealand’s Trade Minister at #IFAJ2015
One of the hard news highlights of the 2015 IFAJ Congress was hearing from the man who was responsible for holding up the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement to get New Zealand’s dairy industry more access to other markets. “The fundamental reason why New Zealand agriculture is so strong is we don’t have a choice, it’s export or die for us,” …
New Zealand’s Minister of Primary Industries
The Honorable Nathan Guy, Minister of Primary Industries for New Zealand, is basically the counterpart of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in this country and he was delighted to welcome the 2015 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) Congress to “little old New Zealand.” “This is a significant event for New Zealand,” said Guy of the 33 countries represented at the …