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 …
Monsanto Student Cotton Blogger
Monsanto once again took their student bloggers on the road. This time to the Beltwide Cotton Conferences. The intern is Kara Willis who attends Prairie View A&M in Texas (right of Janice Person). You can find Kara’s blog on the Monsanto website. I spoke to her after she interviewed me for her blog. Kara is an ag econ major who …
Case IH Cotton Picker Success
It has been a year since Case IH introduced the Case IH Module Express™ 625, the only commercial cotton picker to build modules while harvesting. Growers who used this machine for the 2007 cotton harvest report that it was a sound investment. “The Module Express allows one man to do the work of three,” says Dan Kornegay, who grows 2,500 …
Honoring Monsanto’s Karen Marshall
At last week’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences an appreciation luncheon was held for Karen Marshall, just retired Senior Director of Industry Affairs for Monsanto. Several people spoke about their respect for Karen and her years of service to the cotton industry including Charles Parker, President of the Cotton Foundation and a cotton grower from Senath, MO. Here’s Charles giving Karen an …
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 …
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 …
Dealing With Cotton Acreage Change
This afternoon I had a chance to meet Dr. Mark Lange, President and CEO of the National Cotton Council. This is him speaking at a lunch earlier today. I actually interviewed him along with Don Molino, Louisiana Agri-News Network and Keith Merckx, Texas State Networks. Of course Don had to ask Mark about the WTO so we got him on …
Headline History
The Marketing Manager for Headline for BASF is Jerry Minore (right). He was working the booth this morning and from the sound of it the traffic has been heavy with growers wanting to know about this new fungicide tool. I know I’ve posted several interviews about Headline but in this one I got Jerry to talk a little bit about …