One of our presenters here at the Syngenta Learning Centers media briefing is Brad Wiersum, Head, Renewable Fuels Strategy, Syngenta Seeds. His topic was their biofuels strategy. As you’ll hear in my interview with him they’re really looking forward to the introduction of some new corn varieties with high levels of corn amylase. By using high amylase corn, they estimate …
Dr. Mike Boehlje Talks New Agriculture
If you’ve never heard Dr. Mike Boehlje, Center for Food & Agricultural Business, Purdue University, speak then you’re missing a good performance. He is passionate about his work. He just completed his presentation on “Farming in the 21st Century” here at the Syngenta Learning Centers media briefing. He started out with the “e” word which is of course, ethanol. However …
Pfizer Research Dairy
Speaking of Pfizer Animal Health . . . One of the people I met at their media event at the veterinary medicine research and development farm was Bill Loveland. Bill manages their research dairy. Pfizer has a state of the art dairy facility that allows them to handle up to 128 animals at a time. Bill says the facility opened …
Behind The Scenes at Pfizer Animal Health
How many companies allow journalists to go behind the scenes and see the whole process of how a product is conceived and brought to market? Not many but that’s what Pfizer Animal Health did last week. I attended their “Delivering Solutions Through Research and Innovation” media event to which they invited cattle publication editors like Holly Martin, High Plains Journal …
Pfizer Suggest Paradigm Shift
One of the Pfizer Animal Health specialists we met this week at their media event in Kalamazoo was Dr. Gordon Brumbaugh. He’s an anti-infective specialist in their Cattle-Specialty Veterinary Operations. The theme of his talk was a “Paradigm Shift.” Basically he wants to challenge producers to think in new ways now that there are products on the market that work …
The State of ACE and Ethanol
Things are winding down here at the ACE Convention. Looking very relaxed this morning was the executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol, Brian Jennings. He gave the state of the industry and organization speech yesterday. I interviewed Brian this morning to find out what he thinks about how things are going in the ethanol industry and especially …
Pfizer Animal Health’s R&D Investment
The executive director for Pfizer Animal Health’s Global Clinical Development is Dr. Bill Baker. He’s responsible for managing the staff and budgets for this group of 120 individuals. At the media event this week he gave us an overview of Pfizer’s Veterinary Medicine Research and Development which is the research organization that has 700 staff in total. He says that …
Pawlenty and Peterson At ACE
We had a couple of politicians with us here today at the ACE Convention. The first one on stage was Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. When I asked him about his vision for the future of ethanol in Minnesota he said he wants to be the benchmark state for the rest of the country on the development, use and availability of …
Getting The BRD Scoop At Pfizer
Here’s the guy who really showed us the way when it comes to BRD in cattle today at the Pfizer Animal Health VMRD facilities. He’s Dr. Dan Scruggs and his topic was the whole BRD complex. I know more about diseases I couldn’t pronounce before today than I’ve got time to write about tonight. Let’s just say there are a …
Draxxin Marketing Manager Dave Korbelik
The Pfizer Animal Health marketing manager for Draxxin is Dave Korbelik. He was our emcee today and introduced our speakers while also contributing some interesting information about Pfizer products. I got to talk to him at supper time and asked him to tell us more about their products which are used to treat bovine respiratory illness since that’s what we …