Each October, cooperatives across the United States celebrate the cooperative difference, business model and the contributions of cooperatives to their communities during National Co-op Month and this year continues the celebration of 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives with the slogan “Cooperative enterprises build a better world.” As one of the nation’s largest cooperatives, GROWMARK has been celebrating all …
Charleston|Orwig Hoofs It for Charity
The company that has been mainly responsible for our ability to cover World Dairy Expo on World Dairy Diary.com year after year is Charleston|Orwig. This integrated marketing and reputation management agency has quite a few clients in the dairy business, including our marquee sponsor, New Holland. I spoke with Charleston|Orwig’s Mike Opperman, Sr. Director, Strategy and Planning, (left on the …
World Dairy Expo Farm Babe
It’s Fabulous Farm Babe time at World Dairy Expo. The Farm Report with Pam Jahnke is in full swing. I got to sit down with Pam for a few minutes to talk about what she hears from her audience of dairy folks here in Wisconsin. When it comes to the dairy industry she says it is thriving with milk production …
Farm Co-ops Set Records in 2011
October is National Cooperative Month and 2012 is the the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, so it is extra special to celebrate record farm cooperative income in 2011. USDA released the latest statistics today, showing that farmer, rancher and fishery cooperatives posted record sales of $213 billion and $5.4 billion in net income, surpassing the previous record sales year …
Ag Secretary Vilsack at World Dairy Expo
It’s opening day at World Dairy Expo. We’ve got beautiful weather and we’ve got a special visitor. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is holding an open town hall meeting. Here he is being welcomed by Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, Ben Brancel. I’ll update this post with audio from the session here as soon as I can after the meeting …
World Dairy Expo Preview
Let’s get a preview of this year’s Expo which I will be covering this week. Before heading out on an SCR Dairy Farm Tour this morning I spent a little time in the media room and visited with Janet Keller, Communications & Public Relations Manager, World Dairy Expo. Janet says the show has a very large commercial exhibits increase with …
A Look Ahead at NAMA 2013
The gavel has been passed and on January 1 Paul Redhage, FMC Agricultural Products, will be the new President of the National Agri-Marketing Association. During the NAMA Fall Conference I got to visit with Paul. Paul is looking forward to having fun in 2013 and says that the whole networking aspect of NAMA will mean we’ll all learn a lot …
Get 2013 Agri-Marketing Conference on Your Calendar
Here’s a heads up for the 2013 Agri-Marketing Conference. It will be held once again in Kansas City, MO. We’re going to be “Forging New Frontiers” from April 17 to April 19 at the Sheraton Crown Center. To get a little bit of a preview of what the committee is doing I visited with Scott McClure, Brighton Agency, during the …
What Future Agriculture Leaders Need
Breakfast in China, afternoon presentation in Minneapolis at the NAMA Fall Conference. That was the schedule on Wednesday for Alltech’s Aidan Connolly! Aidan was the closing keynote speaker for the conference with a presentation called, “Through the Lens of a Leader.” His task was to look at what agriculture is facing today and what lies ahead. You get a clue …
USDA Lowers Grain Stocks
USDA’s Quarterly Grain Stocks report out this morning shows declines in stocks of corn, soybeans and wheat compared to this time last year. The report shows corn stocks down 12% from September 2011, soybean stocks down 21% and all wheat stocks down 2%. Old crop corn stocks in all positions on September 1, 2012 totaled 988 million bushels, soybeans totaled …