If you don’t have an invitation to the Alltech 23rd International Feed Industry Symposium, May 20-23, 2007 in Lexington, KY, then you need to contact your local Alltech representative. I’ll be there along with the whole International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) executive committee. In fact, besides covering the event here on AgWired I’ll be conducting a blogging/podcasting workshop for …
IFAJ E-News Member Survey Results
The latest IFAJ E-News is out and it contains a summary of the results of an online member survey that was just conducted. The results are interesting. Here’s a selection of what the survey found: While we only received a small number of responses, the trends were clear. Getting your stories published, limited career opportunities and low salaries all rated …
Farm Podcasting in the United Kingdom Pharo Style
I’m just jet lagging a little bit this morning and I think you can probably hear it in my voice on this week’s ZimmCast. Bouncing back and forth across the big pond does have a cost. In this week’s program I’ve got an interview with Adrian Bell, Pharo, a full service agency in the United Kingdom with a focus on agribusiness. Adrian was a panelist at the IFAJ professional improvement seminar that took place in Berlin, Germany this past week. I think Adrian brought a very interesting perspective to the discussion as it relates to journalists working with public relations people.
Back in the U. S. of A.
I know it sometimes seems like we do a lot of this at an IFAJ meeting. It’s called fellowship and I think it’s one of the important elements of an IFAJ meeting. As I sat with these guys at our dinner on Saturday night that was hosted by the Irish Food Board (thank you very much), I listened to them talk about meetings from years and years ago. Like many professional organizations IFAJ allows members to not only develop contacts and skills but friendships that last a lifetime.
I took a few pictures as usual at this meeting. You can find them online here: IFAJ/Green Week Online Photo Album
IFAJ Professional Development Session
The IFAJ professional improvement session is now underway here at Green Week. These panelists will each be making remarks before things open up for a general discussion. The topic is, “How journalists can work more effectively with public relations professionals and vice versa.” The panelists include:
The Whole IFAJ Group
Here’s the whole group gathered together at the Green Week press center meeting about the very important things facing the IFAJ. We’ve got committee reports going on right now. Mike Wilson is discussing the communications committee. One of the things the organization is looking into is a change in the IFAJ website to make it easier to post current information and perhaps have more people involved in doing that. You can be sure that I’ve voiced my ideas on this issue!
IFAJ Executive Meeting
Here’s the head shed (leaders for those of you in Rio Lindo) of the IFAJ. It’s Saturday morning and we’re having the IFAJ Executive Meeting. It looks like we have about 27 people here. I’m not here to provide you with a detailed report of the activities and agenda but I can tell you that the organization is growing and dealing with a lot of questions that come with growth and having a diverse membership that is spread over a lot of languages and cultures. It’s an interesting mix. But we’re dealing with the very same things that any member organization has to. I think one of the strong points of this organization is how inclusive it is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a broadcaster, editor or what. The point is we’re all reporting on agriculture have a desire to improve our skills.
Agricultural Production Displays
Some of the best looking vegetables I’ve ever seen are growing indoors here in one of the main agriculture buildings. I wish my garden looked like this. But I guess it would if I had a guy in overalls (there were a lot them) manually grooming and treating each plant every day. This building looks like a collaboration of many companies and you could essentially follow agricultural production through the whole chain from field to plate since you had crops, animals, processing and even a small grocery store set up to show how the consumer where their food actually comes from.
Biofuels Pavilion Features Ethanol
I had heard that Green Week had a whole pavilion devoted to bio energy this year. When I got there I found that it had more booths dedicated to things like wood pellet burning stoves for heat and a number of solar panel energy companies than what we think of such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Bio Products Pavilion
On Thursday at Green Week I finally had a chance to wander around some of the pavilions and booths. I started with the agricultural area first and walked right into a biobased products section. I’m not sure what the exact definition of “bio” is around the world or if it actually is different in different countries. I say this because this display was of organic dairy products and that doesn’t fit into my definition of bio-based products. In fact, I would say that true organic production implies to me that bio-type products weren’t used in the making of these items.