Once upon a time, there were as many as 750 producers who attended Beltwide Cotton Conferences, but now it’s down to about 200 – so it’s time for a change. Producer/ginner Kenneth Hood of Mississippi has attended 32 Beltwides over the years and he was on the steering committee that made the decision on how to update the meeting for …
FMC Talks New Product Lines
FMC Corporation shared new product lines during the recent National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Trade Talks. Chuck talked with Bentley Curry, FMC Representative, about herbicides and harvest aids farmers can take advantage of in the fields. “This year we had the Authority line of products in combination with Authority XL, Authority MTZ. Probably the product that was best fitted for …
Soybeans Up, Corn Crop Down a Bit
The October USDA crop production report out this morning took a little bit more off the corn crop but increased the soybean crop by nine percent. Corn production is forecast at 10.7 billion bushels, down slightly from the September forecast and down 13 percent from 2011. This represents the lowest production in the United States since 2006. Based on conditions …
Flavor Infused Cottonseed Oil From Alcala Farms
Pure cottonseed oil from Alcala Farms. It’s what I’ll be cooking with. Here’s why: “Silky-clear, lightweight body and flavor-neutral palate. Pure Cottonseed Oil is the perfect base for salad oils, marinades, sauces, frying, stir-frying, searing and sauteing.” It’s the original vegetable oil. Bet you didn’t know that CRISCO stands for Crystallized Cottonseed Oil. I didn’t either until I got to …
Monsanto Working on Drought Tolerant Cotton
Doug Jost is a Technology Development Representative for Monsanto and was visiting with us at the Ag Media Summit. Doug says what they do for the company is “test our new technologies usually in an experimental form and not commercialized yet . . . from cotton varieties to roundup formulations to drought tolerant cotton, things like that.” When it comes …
BASF and Monsanto Team for Fungicide Seed Treatments
BASF and Monsanto are teaming up for fungicide seed treatments for cotton and soybeans in North America. Monsanto’s next generation Acceleron® Seed Treatment Products for soybeans and cotton will contain F500®—the same active ingredient found in Headline® fungicide—and the innovation Xemium® fungicide, which is expected to be registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2012. According to BASF …
First USDA Planting Guess
Our ZimmPoll question this week is about what you think will be planted this year (just for corn and soybeans, with our apologies to the wheat and cotton growers), and USDA’s Chief Economist gave his answer at the 2012 Agricultural Outlook Forum last week. “We’re estimating corn plantings at about 94 million acres, the largest plantings since 1944,” said Joe …
Preparing For 2012 Cotton Season With FMC
During the Beltwide Cotton Conferences I visited with Gerald Simmons, FMC Southern Business Manager, about some best management practices and things to consider when preparing for this year’s crop. He says the business has changed, especially technology, but that growers should also consider some of those “old” options they have. FMC has a broad portfolio now for cotton that growers …
John Deere Cotton Harvest Module Identification
John Deere talked up its latest application for cotton growers during this year’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences. Harvest Identification Cotton will continue to automate the production of a cotton module. This is tied into the 7760 cotton picker. The application will use the RFID tags that are embedded into the module wrap. These will be captured by an RFID reader on …
Athena For Cotton
During the Beltwide Cotton Conferences my sponsor, FMC, featured two products for cotton growers, Athena and Mustang Max. I visited with Rusty Mitchell, to learn more about Athena. Rusty says Athena was originally developed for tree fruits and vegetable crops but realized it would have a great fit in cotton. It’s a pre-mix insecticide which was initially targeting spider mite …