American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman gave a rousing “rally the troops” address to thousands meeting in Seattle for the AFBF 91st Annual Meeting Sunday morning. “We gather in Seattle this week to measure progress along our own Passage to Success,” Stallman began, continuing on to talk about the many challenges currently impacting the industry – from critics to …
Final Preview of AG CONNECT Expo
The floor of the upcoming AG CONNECT Expo is very busy right now. This morning I spoke with Show Director, Sara Mooney, who was on-location. In this week’s ZimmCast she provides a last preview and let’s us know how the final preparations are going. I’ll be there by the end of the weekend for the pre-show activities that take place …
Fluidigm Workshop at Plant/Animal Genome Conference
The 18th International Plant and Animal Genome Conference is about to take place January 9-13 at the Town & Country Convention Center in San Diego, California and AgWired sponsor Fluidigm will be there. In fact they will be conducting one of the workshops titled, “Enabling High Sample Throughput SNP Genotyping for Plant and Animal Studies.” It will be held on …
Last 2009 Headline Harvest Report
So, here it is, the last BASF Headline Harvest report for 2009 with an Illinois farmer who has finished his harvest this year. Jim Wade of Clifton says he just finished up about two weeks before Christmas but it wasn’t as bad as 1967 when he was still had corn in January. “The biggest thing was setting in line, all …
What’s New With Syngenta Seeds
I learned what’s new with Syngenta Seeds from Wayne Fithian at the recent NAFB Trade Talk. He says that because of biotechnology the pace of new products is becoming more rapid. According to Wayne, they’re in the final stages of regulatory approval of their Agrisure Viptera for corn which they hope to have available for planting in 2010. Following that …
Headline Harvest Report from Kankakee
Who would have thought we would still be doing BASF Headline Harvest reports the last week of the year? This week we traveled to northern Illinois where there is still lots of corn in the fields and lots of flooded areas due to the extremely wet fall. I talked with Ron Hansen of Kankakee, who still has about 300 acres …
New From John Deere
To tell us what’s new with John Deere I spoke to Matthew Arnold, Sr. Marketing Representative. Matthew was attending the NAFB Trade Talk to discuss the new 8R and 8RT tractors. These tractors range in horsepower from 225 to 345 with larger cabs and more fuel efficient engines. They also have a new suspension system on the 8RT Track models. …
Chicago Farmers Thoughts On Social Media
I’m going to be talking about social media and networking at the upcoming Chicago Farmers Farmland Investment Fair. But before getting there I talked about it with Rich Schell, SchellAcres.com, who is a member and committee organizer for the fair. He’s also an Attorney, Author & Agri-preneur, Wagner & Schell, LLP. Rich says that since the purpose of the Fair …
What’s New At Alltech
What’s new with Alltech? That’s a good question and one I posed to Billy Frey at the NAFB Alltech Trade Talk booth recently. According to Billy one of the things this year is the fact that crops are still in the fields and that means a greater chance of molds and mycotoxins. He says that one of their core competencies …
NAFB Internet Usage Study
The National Association of Farm Broadcasting recently released its latest Internet Usage Study. Cindy spoke with Ted Haller at their convention and I thought I’d have a chat with him about it too since the organization sent our a release on it last week. You can download a pdf with some of the key findings of the study on their …