Canadian Minister of Agriculture, Gerry Ritz, was the featured speaker today during the State Agriculture and Rural Leaders’ Annual Legislative Agriculture Chairs Summit Luncheon during the AG CONNECT Expo. While Ritz focused on ag initiatives in Canada and the agricultural and trade relationships and programs between Canada and the U.S., the issue that got many fired up in the audience …
Fifth US-Mongolia Business Forum at AG CONNECT a Success
The Fifth U.S.-Mongolia Business Forum took place simultaneously with the AG CONNECT Expo yesterday with several dozen delegates from Mongolia meeting with delegates from the United States to discuss how the two countries can better work together. A goal as delivered by the various speakers, is to see more U.S. companies investing in Mongolia. The Mongolian delegation is one of …
Outlook For Ag Equipment Industry
Agrievolution 2010 is a very international event. We’ve got participants and presentations from countries like Russia, Brazil, Venuzuela and China. I met one of our delegates, Massimo Goldoni, President, UNACOMA, the Italian equipment manufacturers association, who attended the first Agrievolution in Rome in 2008. Massimo says that back in 2008 they thought it would be helpful to pull together the …
An Agrievolution Taking Place in Orlando
One of the co-located events taking place with AG CONNECT EXPO is Agrievolution. Opening up the program this morning is Doug DeVries, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Services – Agriculture and Turf Division, John Deere. I spoke with him just prior to the start of the program. Doug is pictured on the right with Rusty Fowler, Krone NA and Martin …
Summary of U.S. Grains Council 2009 Corn Mission
For those of you who didn’t get to follow along with the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission trip I went on last month I have prepared a slide show that will give you a pretty good overview of all we saw and learned. In the show you can hear from some of the key individuals I interviewed including the U.S. …
Olympic Cranberries
Now this is going to be impressive. Thirteen million cranberries will be used to make a “colossal depiction of the Canadian Olympic Committee’s logo” and it will be floated in the Fraser River running in front of the Richmond Olympic Oval throughout the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The tribute celebrates Richmond’s top agricultural crop and honors the Winter Games. The …
Concluding Corn Mission Thoughts
The U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team is home safe and sound. It was a very interesting 2 weeks of visits with American grain customers and others in Morocco, Egypt and Jordan. You might expect these countries to be “all the same.” However, each country has a very distinct culture and that includes everything from food to how they drive. …
Iraq Will Be Good Grains Market Upon Stabilization
The political and safety situation in Iraq today is making it very difficult to conduct business within the country, especially for companies and farmers that would like to export U.S. feed grains into the market. However, that’s going to change in the next couple years according to some Iraqi businessmen that the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team met with. …
Jordan Dairy Calf Barn
When the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team toured the Hamoudeh Group dairy northeast of Amman they saw the open yards, milking parlor and as you’ll see in this video clip, the calf barn. USGC Corn Mission In Jordan Photo Album
Infrared Grain Testing
When the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team visited a feed mill this morning owned by the Hamoudeh Group they saw some state of the art grain testing. The company has infrared grain testing equipment which quickly analyzes a sample and provides a printout of a number of the qualities most important to them. You can see a sample being …