Missouri cotton farmer and Chairman of the National Cotton Council Charles Parker welcomed everyone to the 2012 Beltwide Cotton Conferences. His remarks kicked off the Beltwide Cotton Production Conference. Besides talking about this year’s conference Charles talked about the activities of the National Cotton Council during 2011. Following the opening remarks we heard about weather patterns in the cotton belt, …
Beltwide Kicks Off 2012 Ag Conference Season
This image greets you as you take the escalator down to the meeting room and registration floor for the Beltwide Cotton Conferences at the Orlando World Center Marriott. I got in too late to register but will get that taken care of early in the morning. While wandering around to get my bearings I did find the general session of …
Looking Ahead To Beltwide Cotton Conference
The first stop on the agriblogging highway for the ZimmComm team will be the 2012 Beltwide Cotton Conference in Orlando, FL. I’ll be attending courtesy of our sponsor, FMC. I’ll be getting there after going to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, FL with daughter Chelsea. Great new year’s week coming up! The Beltwide Cotton Conferences (BWCC) speed the transfer of …
Blogging Beltwide
That’s what Katie Allen is doing for Monsanto. Wish I was there but it just didn’t work out this year. My name is Katie Allen, and I am a graduate student in agricultural communications at Texas Tech University. I am from the small town of Marceline, Missouri, where my family farms livestock and row crops. I graduated from the University …
What The Bayer Season Is
At last week’s Beltwide we learned about the Bayer Season. Basically, it’s about taking care of your plants during the critical first 40 days. One of the presenters was John Smith, Bayer CropScience director of marketing. He says that the Bayer Season is a collection of products, innovation and people. They’re meant to help the cotton grower during those first …
Custom Cotton Reports For Monsanto
While last week’s Beltwide was going on Monsanto not only had Kara Willis doing student blogging but Stewart Doane was producing custom audio reports for their website. Called, “Daily Beltwide Cotton Conferences Audio Recap with Stewart Doan,” customers were able to find fresh news from the event each day. Great concept and a very good application for a company website …
Learning More ABout Cotton Precision
One of the new product development guys at John Deere in their precision area is Patrick Sikora, John Deere Ag Management Solutions Group. He was one of the guys I interviewed at last week’s Beltwide. Patrick says that cotton growers have been some of the earliest adopters of precision farming technology but that there may be some not familiar with …
Headlining a New Developments Session
One of the New Developments From Industry sessions at Beltwide was done by Greg Stratman, BASF Technical Services Representative (left). Of course he talked about Headline. One of the questions he says he gets most often from growers is about the yield increase they can get by treating foliar diseases. He says that when it comes to the work they’ve …
Sharing Nikon Storey’s
Bill Storey is a broadcaster in Tennessee who stopped by the Beltwide Cotton Conferences. He works for the Tennessee Radio Network. He’s also a photographer so we shared Nikon stories. He says he takes a lot of event photos for Clear Channel that they put online. Bill says it’s almost impossible to take his picture with a flash and get …
Beltwide Media Dinner
The National Cotton Council and Cotton Board hosted the media with a dinner last night that was the best meal I’ve had at the Opryland Hotel so far. Most of us are leaving this morning as the Beltwide comes to an end. I want to thank Marjory Walker and Brad Robb for all their help while here and especially for …