New Program to Empower Farmers as Leaders

Talia Goes

DuPont_oval_redDuPont and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) announced a new program to develop corn farmers for agricultural leadership opportunities. With more focus on food than ever, the NCGA DuPont New Leader Program will help to empower growers to share their story of their farms and the benefits of a robust agriculture system with key audiences, including consumers, media and decision-makers.

The NCGA DuPont New Leader Program will bring farmers from each affiliated state to two sessions to develop and hone their communications and leadership skills. The first session will be held in November at the DuPont Pioneer facilities in Johnston, Iowa. The second session will take place in Washington in July 2014. In between the two sessions, those farm couples involved will be encouraged to be actively participating and honing their skills in state and national programs.

Applications for the inaugural class will be available later this summer.

Agribusiness, NCGA

Grant Program Supports Future Newscasters

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NAFBFoundation-color-compressedNearly a dozen future newscasters throughout the U.S. are gaining valuable experience in farm broadcasting this summer as part of the DuPont Pioneer NAFB (National Association of Farm Broadcasting) Foundation Internship Program.

The program assists 10 NAFB member stations and networks with $1,000 grants from Pioneer to provide interns on-the-job agricultural broadcasting experience — from news production to live reporting.

“This program complements the Pioneer commitment to providing expanded opportunities to young people who want to enter agriculture as a career,” says Jerry Harrington, DuPont Pioneer sales and marketing public relations manager. “This also reflects the company’s support for farm broadcasters and the valuable service they provide agriculture.”

Working with NAFB, Pioneer doubled the number of grants for 2013 compared to prior years. The support expands station and network involvement and allows more interns to experience farm broadcasting.

Agribusiness, NAFB

Stabilizing Nitrogen Important for Conservation Tillage

Chuck Zimmerman

2013 CTIC TourI want to say a big thanks to Koch Agronomic Services for being the sponsor of our coverage of the 2013 Conservation in Action Tour again this year. During the tour I visited with Greg Schwab, Director of Agronomy. He says that some of the products they make help farmers do conservation tillage. One of the challenges is maintaining the fertilizer nitrogen that you apply which can be lost as a gas. That’s where their product AGROTAIN plays a role since it is a nitrogen stabilizer. There are a number of research plots that we saw during the tour in the Indian Creek Watershed.

You can listen to my interview with Greg here: Interview with Greg Schwab

2013 Conservation in Action Tour Photo Album

Ag Groups, Audio, Conservation, CTIC, Koch Agronomic Services

Fate of Catfish Program in Farm Bill Conference

Cindy Zimmerman

catfish-imageThe House farm-only version of the farm bill includes repeal of USDA catfish inspection program but the Senate bill does not and those who are in favor of getting rid of the program are hoping it will survive the conference committee.

“Its fate now lies with the Farm Bill conferees who will have to decide if they support American farmers or a special interest handout that wastes 170 million taxpayer dollars and puts U.S. Ag exports at risk for retaliatory measures from our trading partners,” said Gavin Gibbons with the National Fisheries Institute. “As this process unfolds it’s important to remember a bipartisan group in the Senate opposes the program, a bipartisan group in the House opposes the program, the GAO opposes the program, countless Ag groups oppose the program, and even the White House opposes the program.”

The House bill was sent to the Senate this week and the next step is putting together a conference committee.

Farm Bill

Analyzing Social Media

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast 403Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. You agrimarketers out there are sure including social media in your strategies judging by the audience I had at the 2013 InfoAg Conference session on the topic. I asked for a show of hands if they had a company Twitter account and almost everyone raised their hand, the same when I asked if they had a company Facebook page. That’s the highest response I’ve ever had when doing a presentation on social media.

Jay Harrison, Maritz HoldingsJoining me for the session was Jay Harrison, Maritz Holdings. He works with their evolve24 division and focused on social media analytics and had some great information to share with us. His company does “social media intelligence” which includes monitoring and interpreting what people are saying on social media as well as advising on ways to respond, especially in a crisis situation. He says one of the biggest challenges they have is analyzing all the publicly available social media data which they then start organizing in a way that allows them to search for specific subjects or terms. He provides some examples in this week’s program.

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: Social Media Analytics

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsors, GROWMARK, locally owned, globally strong and Monsanto, Roundup Ready Plus, for their support.

Audio, Social Media, ZimmCast

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Melissa Sandfort

20130715_205750I know people usually post amazing pictures for “Wordless Wednesday” or funny ones for “Throwback Thursday” but this one was just too good to pass up.

My Aunt Jeanette writes: Some very good friends of ours snapped this picture while they were out doing their evening irrigating. The photo shows the sun going down behind our farm. It was the perfect end to a hot, tiring July day! (Thank you to Troy and Trish Shuck for the photo.)

I don’t think I need to say any more…

Until we walk again …

Uncategorized

Southern Peanut Growers Meeting in PCB

Cindy Zimmerman

spgc-132013 marks the 15th year for the Southern Peanut Growers Conference and the agenda this year is once again chock full of opportunities to learn more about the latest products and equipment, what’s going on in Washington, and how marketing and research is making the peanut industry better, more sustainable and more profitable than ever.

It all starts today so we are heading off to Panama City Beach for a few days of finding out what’s going on in the world of peanuts here in the Southeast. Check out the SPGC blog, which we have been doing for them since 2008, for complete coverage.

Ag Groups, Events, Peanuts

Agri-Pulse Open Mic with Rep. Randy Neugebauer

Cindy Zimmerman

New on Agri-Pulse this week:

open-micFresh from voting on a split farm bill that creates a new permanent farm law, Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, tells why GOP leaders decided to pursue this path. Neugebauer represents the 19th Congressional District of Texas that covers several counties of the Texas Panhandle and the cities of Abilene and Lubbock and serves as a senior member on the Agriculture Committee. He describes last week’s farm bill vote as a “first down, not a touchdown” as the measure hopefully heads to conference on at least the commodity title.

Listen to the Agri-Pulse Open Mic interview with Rep. Randy Neugebauer here.

Agri-Pulse

Whaley Joins Wheat Growers

Cindy Zimmerman

whaleyIt’s now official. Our good friend and ag industry veteran Hugh Whaley has joined the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) and the National Wheat Foundation (NWF) as director of corporate relations. Though we have known Hugh for nearly 30 years now, this is the best fairly recent photo I could find. And Chuck just saw him a month ago!

In his new role, Whaley will be the organizations’ lead staffer working to initiate, build and maintain strategic relationships with agribusinesses and other industry partners. NAWG and the Foundation, which is managed by NAWG, facilitate a wide range of policy, educational and outreach activities and maintain the Wheat Growers Building on Capitol Hill. Whaley was most recently the general manager for the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), of which NAWG is a member. Previous to that, he worked for two well-known marketing communications firms focusing on agriculture clients and for the American Soybean Association.

nawg-staffNAWG is also pleased to announce the promotions of Brooke Shupe to director of government affairs for risk management and Will Stafford to assistant director of government affairs for trade, transportation and commodity markets. Shupe joined the Association in April of last year and manages farm policy, crop insurance and related policies. She also runs WheatPAC, wheat growers’ political action committee. Stafford came to NAWG in 2011 and became a government affairs representative last year. In addition to trade, transportation and markets, Stafford follows research policy.

Ag Groups, NAWG, Wheat

How Could UAVs Help You?

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Before we get to our new ZimmPoll let’s look at the results of our latest one which asked the question, “ Do you watch or want to watch live or recorded ag news television programs online?” The results indicate that there is an interest in online agricultural television programming.

Our poll results: Thirty-nine percent said Yes, I Currently Do, thirty-six percent said Yes, Need To Find Them, and twenty-five percent said No, Don’t Have Time or Interest. Online activities have become the way of the present and future. With technology making jobs more time efficient it allows for extra minutes to be spent catching up on the latest.

Untitled

Our new ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, “What use would you have for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle?” That would be UAV for short – better known as drones, but the industry doesn’t like to use that word because it has a negative connotation. Nevertheless, we’re talking about small, remote-controlled aircraft that can be used to get a bird’s eye view of the land, capturing either still photos or video or both, or even live streaming. Is that something you could use on your operation? Let us know.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by New Holland Agriculture.

ZimmPoll