Our Secretary of Ag, Mike Johanns was in Madagascar this past week. I wish they’d invited AgWired to go along. Cindy and I sponsor a child in Madagascar through CFCA and I’ve wanted to visit him and his family. Anyway, it looks like our secretary got some work done there.

I didn’t even know there was an American Agricultural Law Association until a notice about this conference was sent to me.

Don’t say it Supachai. We want to see something accomplished in Hong Kong. I’ve already been to one WTO Ministerial (Seattle) when nothing was accomplished. It just goes to show you how difficult it is and always will be to get hundreds of countries to agree on anything. The World Trade Organization is planning a conference later this year in Hong Kong and AgWired is hoping to cover it. Let’s just hope we have something to cover!

You may already know that the first USDA Farm Bill Forum is complete and that several more have been announced. This is very early in the process so it’ll be interesting to see how these go. The first one had about 400 people participate in Nashville, TN.

Through a post on Mediapace I found a link to a study done by Catalyst Group Design titled “Net Rage” A Study of Blogs and Usability At first it sounded like a pretty good document and I suppose you can gain some insight from their study and findings. However, it says they did this study using 9 people. I’m familiar with doing research on small groups of participants but not this small. I wonder what the study would have concluded if they’d used a group of at least 50 or 60 participants.

I’m back. After 9 days, 5 of them driving. I thought I could get more posted while on this trip but it just didn’t work out that way. It was a family thing and spending time shooting fireworks with my nephews & nieces in Georgia or at a reception with in-laws in Florida was just more important. The main reason for the trip was to move my oldest daughter to south Florida. She’ll finish her college career at Ave Maria University in Naples. It’s a pretty cool place. They’re in a temporary campus while they build a new college and town nearby. Very amazing place.

I thought my 3,000 plus miles in the last 9 days was a lot of travel but our Sec. of Ag Mike Johannes is doing much more. He’s travelling in China and Africa July 9-21 for multilateral and bilateral meetings on agricultural trade and development. Although it doesn’t have frequent postings he is writing a travelogue of sorts. I kind of think a blog would be a better way to do it but then what do I know? Here’s an excerpt from his latest post.

As if moving a daughter to another state wasn’t enough to deal with we had to drive right into this little storm! The photo is courtesy of The Weather Channel. We’re on the ocean side of the sunshine state but still have high winds and a lot of rain.

I know we haven’t posted much the last couple days but it’s move a daughter to college week and we’ve been on the road. But just to show you that work is getting done here’s Cindy editing audio for one of our clients. We’re in Georgia at the moment and spent some time on the phone today interviewing corn growers about rootworm and corn borer problems and protection.

By now I’m sure most of you are on your much needed holiday break. We’re ready to do the same but that doesn’t mean no news from AgWired. We’ll find something to let you know about. During the next week or so we’ll be moving a daughter to college (1 of 2 that will be moving out and into college this fall!). But even during the travel you’ll still get your daily dose of AgWired!