This may have been the last time I will have the chance to interview the current Secretary of Agriculture – I think this is about the 10th secretary I have been able to report on during my career in ag communications! Anyway – Secretary Schafer was here at the Cellulosic Ethanol Summit in south Florida Wednesday and had a small …
Lindsay Hill Elected NAFB VP
We are very pleased to report that our good friend Lindsay Hill of AdVance, ABN and Buckeye Ag Radio Network has been elected as vice president of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting. She is pictured here with her very proud husband and partner Andy Vance shortly after the election took place. Lindsay is a 10-year veteran of agricultural media …
NAFB Trade Talk Hectic As Usual
I think we need a couple days to get all of the Trade Talking done that we’d like to do! Cindy and I did a lot of interviews today and we’ll be using them in the coming weeks. I got to meet with one of my musical heroes this morning during the NAFB Trade Talk session. He was hanging out …
Honoring Jim Evans
This evening we honored a real friend and mentor of many of us in agricultural communications, Jim Evans. He’s seen here with the Cindy’s (l-r Cindy Zimmerman, Cyndi Young, Jim, Cindy Cunningham). A reception was held in Jim’s honor and to bring to our awareness a new “Campaign for the James F. Evans Endowed Chair in Agricultural Communications” at the …
NAFB Convention Opening Panel
With the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference over I’ve made the permanent move to the Westin for the NAFB meeting. After a joint meeting with NAMA, the first session for NAFB was titled, “Staking Value, Lifting Tides.” Mike Adams, AgriTalk presided over the session which featured some of our good friends. You can see Bill Farmakis, J. L. Farmakis, Pat …
Survey of Rural Lifestylers’
The first session today at Trends in Agriculture was all about a national survey of rural lifestyle people conducted by Susan Spaulding, Market Directions. She worked with the Country Living Association on the survey and the presentation was made jointly by Susan and CLA Director, Courtney Yuskis (pictured). One of the interesting things I heard was the high level of …
Marketing To Idyllic Lifestyle Seekers
Somehow this post got deleted so I’m not sure what I originally posted but let me get it fixed. At the NAMA Trends In Agriculture conference I learned about “Idyllic Lifestyle Seekers” from Dan Duffy, CEO, United Country Real Estate. He was on the program to talk about how they’re marketing to those you like to live a rural lifestyle. …
Are You Sure About Your Strategy?
The first speaker at the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference was Franck Schuurmans, Non-Profit Practices for Decision Strategies International. He really made us work our brains early by speaking about strategies. For one thing he challenged everyone to not be so confident in “knowing what you know” as in “knowing what you don’t know.” You’ve got to think about that …
Why Do You Attend Trends in Agriculture?
I would have had more posted from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference last night but we had major web server work being done. That’s my excuse. That’s all done with though so expect to see much more today here on AgWired. Let’s start with this. I asked some of the folks attending why they are here: trends-08-collage.mp3 And of …
New Ethanol Group Being Formed
According to Mr. Ethanol, Jeff Broin, CEO, POET we’re about to hear of a new organization that will help open new markets for the renewable fuel. When I spoke to Jeff at last week’s Project LIBERTY field day he said that an issue that presents a challenge to the ethanol industry is the regulatory cap which limits ethanol to 10 …