It’s the first day of IFAJ Congress 2008 activities and the good news is, our luggage arrived! This morning the Executive Committee is meeting and after lunch we’ll have an IFAJ delegates business meeting. I’m going to try to cover that. In the meantime, the welcome committee is greeting attendees in the lobby of our hotel. I spoke with one …
Austrian Corn Greetings
As we arrived in Graz yesterday for the IFAJ Congress and headed from the airport to the hotel, the first landscape that greeted us was corn. Even though they are farther north latitude-wise than even Minnesota, their corn is pretty close to harvest at this point. Once we checked in, we found a Kornland yogurt bar awaiting us on the …
Checked In For IFAJ In Austria
All right. We’re here in Austria. Let the IFAJ games begin! After I get this post done I’m going to be taking a nap for a while. Cindy’s already there. Our flight out of St. Louis was 2 hours delayed yesterday and that meant we missed our flight out of Chicago. So we were re-routed via Frankfurt and when we …
IFAJ Congress Kicks Off Wednesday
Cindy and I are on our way to Austria/Slovenia. This year’s IFAJ Congress is looking like it’s going to be a lot of fun. I just hope we get good internet access and have a little time to relax. Those were two issues we had trouble with last year. Here’s some of the activities on the agenda: Reception with typical …
Almost Time For IFAJ Congress 2008
Cindy and I got to know Franz Fischler, former EU Commissioner of Agriculture, at last year’s IFAJ Congress in Japan. Prior to his work with the EU he was Austria’s Minster of Agriculture and Forestry. This year he’s President of the IFAJ Congress in Austria/Slovenia. I would like to invite you to the 52nd IFAJ Congress “From the mountains to …
The Blue Ribbon Cookbook Blog
Some people are just meant to be bloggers and Liz Harfull is one of them. She’s the author of the IFAJ e-newsletter and an agricultural journalist down under. I just got this message from Liz so I thought I’d point you to her new blog, The Blue Ribbon Cookbook. By the way, I have just set up my first blog …
IFAJ Star Prize Announced
In a break from tradition, the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists has just announced their 2008 Star Prize winners for writing. You can read their stories via links on the IFAJ website. Treena Hein from Canada is the winner of the prestigious 2008 IFAJ Star Prize for Agricultural Journalism, sponsored by John Deere. The winning article, “Up with hemp,” was …
IFAJ President David Markey Says Goodbye
The International Federation of Agricultural Journalists will have a chance to celebrate our outgoing President, David Markey, this fall at the Congress in Austria/Slovenia. David has had a big and positive impact on the organization and I’m sure he’ll continue to be supportive. Here’s his letter to the membership about his term ending. It’s hard to believe that my term …
IFAJ Congress 2009 Planning
The planning committee for the IFAJ Congress 2009 met this morning for several hours. The event will be held in conjunction with next year’s AMS in Ft. Worth, TX. Today’s meeting was very well attended. Mike Wilson, Greg Lamp and Diane Johnson have this thing well organized. We had quite a few people who had not been assigned to a …
Be A Sponsor Cowboy
We’re looking ahead to next year and you know how you like to plan your budgets. Have you got some money to support IFAJ and AMS? If your company or organization would like to help support the IFAJ Congress 2009 then you can find information on how with the all new sponsor brochure (pdf). The world’s premier agricultural communicators will …