Last night we launched a new look for PrecisionPays.com, the industry’s source for news and information about precision agriculture.
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FCS Financial is offering up to 35 scholarships valued at $1,000 each to encourage and support higher education.
Beck’s Hybrids is pleased to announce the purchase of Imboden Farms in central Ohio.
Dairy Farmers of America’s Board of Directors and management announced the Cooperative has reached a settlement agreement in the class action lawsuit against DFA in the southeastern United States.
This week I read, “Demystifying Food from Farm to Fork,” by Maurice J. Hladik. Many of you may be familiar with Hladik, an agricultural expert who has spoken at events all around the world including Commodity Classic. The goal of the book is to take a look at food production from “farm to fork”.
As with many concepts, farm to fork can be defined in many ways. Hladik defines it as, “Pertaining to the human food chain from agricultural production to consumption. In other words, from our readers farm to my table.”
As Hladik takes the reader through the varying stages in between the planting, growing and harvesting of food through manufacturing and eventually to the table, he explained the pros and cons, addressed any surrounding controversies and presented both sides of each argument. For this I was very impressed, as many writers take the view of “it’s my way or no way”.
Hladik also points out certain areas that he says are portrayed in the media as myths. For example, he notes that the majority of farms in the U.S. are not corporate owned, but family owned. He also puts to rest the idea that our food is not safe – America has an extremely safe food supply.
While the book may be better suited to those of us who are not very familiar with agriculture, growing up on a farm himself, he dots the narrative with very poignant stories about his own experiences. It is these moments that make the book a joy to read (and educational) for even the most expert of farmers around the world.
I’m just experimenting with Twitter’s embedded tweets. Haven’t done one before. Here’s a tweet I just did of the USFRA Faces of Farming winners announcement. Looks good. I’ll be keeping my eye out for tweets to share here from time to time now!
To get a preview of what’s to come listen in on an interview with Jessica Robinson, Director of Communications for the National Biodiesel Board. The conference theme is Momentum. Jessica says the theme fits on several levels. To start with, the National Biodiesel Board and biodiesel is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Then you have to look at the challenging year the industry had in 2012. Now NBB feels like it is poised for new growth in 2013. It is the first time the conference has been held in Las Vegas.
The National Biodiesel Conference is running at the same time as the National Ethanol Conference, which is also in Las Vegas. This will be an interesting trip for the ZimmComm team. We’d like to see more ag media cover these conventions since there is not only good news and information but it’s very ag based since the main feed stocks for each renewable energy source come from farms. But if you can’t cover it then just follow along with us here and on Domestic Fuel or the Biodiesel Conference Blog to obtain photos and interviews, etc.
The four represent a range of agricultural commodities including corn and soybeans, hogs, cattle, and dairy and they were chosen from nine finalists announced last month at the New York Food Dialogues. The winners will act as national spokespeople, and will share stories and experiences on a national stage to help answer consumers’ questions about how food is grown and raised to feed our nation.
During an announcement this morning, each of them gave their views about what they believe is the most important story for agriculture to share.
Chris Chinn of Clarence, Missouri is a 5th generation farmer with her husband Kevin, his parents and brother raising hogs, cattle, hay and row crops. “I think it’s more important for us to listen to the concerns that people have about how food is produced so we can have a more open dialogue,” Chris said.
Will Gilmer and his father own/operate a dairy farm in Lamar County, Alabama that has been in continuous operation since the early 1950s. “It’s important that we help people understand what the new things we’re doing are, why we’re doing them and how it’s beneficial to them in giving them great choices at the grocery store,” said Will.
Katie Pratt and her husband Andy (7th generation farmer) and their two children raise corn, soybeans and seed corn in Dixon, Illinois in partnership with Andy’s family. “One of the stories that needs to be told is that we are families operating businesses,” said Katie.
Bo Stone jointly owns P & S Farms in Rowland, NC with his wife Missy and his parents where they grow corn, wheat and soybeans, hogs and cattle, as well as strawberries and sweet corn that are sold at their own roadside market. “We are all consumers of our products and I’d like for everyone to know that we’re in this together,” he said.
Listen to those comments in response to a question by farm broadcaster Jeff Nalley: USFRA Faces of Farming
Cory Winstead and Nick Klump are AgFanatics and they are not afraid to tell the world about it.
AgFanatics is a new podcast from AgriVisor.com, an agricultural advisory firm that is part of the GROWMARK family of companies, and Cory and Nick are the happy hosts making stuff like Farm Bill, Fiscal Cliff, the river situation, marketing and USDA reports fun and interesting!
“You will notice we have a good time doing what we do,” Cory says. “The best part of this is we are starting to get a good number of listeners in just our short month of doing this.”
AgFanatics can be found on Itunes or right from the front page at www.agrivisor.com. It is a 15-20 min program updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays that touches on a variety of agricultural topics. We will be featuring them here on AgWired as well.
The question of whether agriculture should sit down with groups like HSUS to find “common cause” is our poll question this week on AgWired.com and while the answers had at first been running well against such dialogue, the poll has now been “hijacked” by HSUS supporters voting in favor. Overnight last week, the poll received nearly 400 responses in the affirmative – and some of the comments of those supporters show exactly why all of agriculture should be very afraid of their agenda.
“Let animals be animals, not commodities.”
“Stop the torture and Killing of the animals.”
“People should just stop eating animals period – there’s no such thing as humane murder.”
The ultimate agenda is obvious – the end to animal agriculture. Once the livestock industry begins to make concessions to animal rights activists that drastically change production methods it becomes a very slippery slope very quickly. It will only be a short matter of time before allowing chickens more room in cages becomes allowing all animals the right to life. Treating animals humanely is not the same as treating them like they are humans – but many activists see no difference.
This website is very well-read by animal activist individuals. We have an obligation to not just defend, but educate. We get lots of comments on our posts about topics like this and it is important for the agriculture community to use this forum for intelligent dialogue and healthy debate. Sometimes it’s easier to just call them wackos and be done with it, but better still to rationally explain that livestock producers know way more about how to care for their animals than HSUS does, and we really like to eat meat!
January 16, 2013 was Iowa Wind Energy Day, and dozens of companies showcased their wind energy technologies to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad along with state legislators. The second annual event was hosted by the Iowa Wind Energy Association (IWEA). Branstad gave remarks as part of the program, and congratulated IWEA for its fifth year of continuous operations. “You sure have done a lot to make Iowa a better place these last five years,” said Brandstad who was recently the chairman of the Governor’s Wind Energy Coalition. “And you have build an impressive membership of nearly 200 members representing all aspects of wind energy.”
“As governor way back in 1983, my first in office, I had the honor of signing the first renewable generation portfolio. And as a result of that, we now have over 20 other states that have copied Iowa’s law,” noted Branstad.
Branstad said that Iowa remains a “real leader” in installation and capacity. Iowa is number one in its electricity produced by wind exceeding 20 percent, more than any other state. “Something we can be very proud of,” he said. “We’re first in the number of wind energy related manufacturing facilities and wind related businesses as well. Perhaps the most important impact wind has had on our state is high quality, good paying jobs and also been a good source of rental income for our farmers,” continued Branstad.
Wind farm development and wind energy manufacturing has attracted an estimated $10 billion of capital investment to Iowa and over $4 billion in increased property tax valuation in the past few years. Iowa landowners are receiving almost $20 million annually in land lease payments. Further development will add billions more in capital investment, thousands of good paying jobs, millions of dollars in annual landowner lease payments and billions of added property tax valuation, according to IWEA.
Listen to Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad’s full remarks here: Iowa Wind Energy Day
One of the facts presented at last week’s BASF grower symposium that surprised me was that only about half the growers in this country are concerned about weed resistance. But, BASF Herbicide Technical Market Manager Luke Bozeman says that has increased tremendously in recent years and will keep increasing. “We’re seeing a greater recognition of the impact of resistant weeds and those growers that haven’t yet experienced it are learning from their neighbors that it can be a problem,” he said.
Because of that, BASF Crop Protection has been very proactive in getting new sites of action (SOA) on the market for growers to fight resistance and now has half of the current 24 registered SOAs. “Quite a range of products that can be utilized to control weeds on the growers’ fields,” he said.
We talk about sites and modes of action when it comes to weed control, but BASF’s Greg Arnell says they are not the same. “We often use those interchangeably and that’s not right,” Greg explained. “Mode of action tells you how a herbicide kills a weed, site of action tells you where the herbicide kills the weed, what target site it’s actually hitting.”
Last night we launched a new look for PrecisionPays.com, the industry’s source for news and information about precision agriculture.
