When the NAAA convention was held in Savannah, GA two years ago this was a big attraction. It’s a Fire Boss water drop.
In between ocean going tankers coming in the Savannah River to dock and unload we got treated again today to a Fire Boss AT-802F Air Tanker demonstration. The pilot performed multiple passes that included filling pontoons with water and then dropping the water back into the river. It makes for quite a show as you’ll see from the video.
2012 NAAA Convention Photo Album
The Agriculture Council of America (ACA) calls on 9th to 12th-grade students to submit an original, 450-word essay or a two-minute video essay about the importance of agriculture. This year’s theme is “American Agriculture: Nourishing Opportunities” and the deadline is Feb. 1, 2013. The ACA asks teachers and parents to encourage student participation.
The theme, “American Agriculture: Nourishing Opportunities,” presents an opportunity for students to address how the agriculture industry is an endless source of opportunity for growth and development. Entrants may choose to either write an essay and/or create a video focusing on how today’s growers are overcoming challenges to provide a safe, stable food supply and sustain the significant role agriculture plays in everyday life.
The national written essay winner receives a $1,000 prize and round-trip ticket to Washington, D.C., for recognition during the Celebration of Ag Dinner held March 19 at Whitten Patio at the USDA. During dinner, the winner will have the opportunity to read the winning essay as well as join with industry representatives, members of Congress, federal agency representatives, media and other friends in a festive ag celebration. The video essay winner wins a $1,000 prize, and the winning video will play during the Celebration of Ag Dinner.
During the opening breakfast of the 2012 National Agricultural Aviation Association two budding pilots got a step closer to soaring over the fields of America thanks to a pair of scholarships from BASF and NAAA. Here’s Justin Mook of Wiggins, CO and Kippy Foltyn of Lansford, ND, with their awards presented by BASF’s Dr. Gary Fellows and NAAA’s President, Mark Hartz. Justin was awarded a $5,000 scholarship and Kippy, $2,500.
“America needs more qualified aerial applicators,” said Gary Fellows, Ph.D., BASF Plant Health Technical Services Manager and member of the National Agricultural Aviation Research & Education Foundation (NAAREF) Professional Aerial Applicators’ Support System, (PAASS) Program Development Committee. “With these scholarships, we’re able to provide people like Justin and Kippy with the opportunity to receive the education they need to enter the field.”
Mook is currently enrolled in Enrich’s Helicopters Flight School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he is pursuing his commercial pilot’s license. He already has his private license and hopes to begin his agricultural pilot training after completing his current program this winter.
Foltyn attended Ag Flight Pilot Training LLC in Bainbridge, Georgia, and plans to continue his education later this year with plans to become an aerial applicator.
“BASF has been a major supporter of NAAA over the years, and we appreciate their continued generosity,” NAAA Executive Director Andrew Moore said. “The grant that allowed us to establish the Agricultural Aviation Scholarship has helped ensure that the pipeline remains well stocked with competent and capable professional ag pilots.”
You can listen to remarks from Dr. Gary Fellows here: Remarks from Dr. Gary Fellows
You can find photos from the 2012 NAAA Convention here: 2012 NAAA Convention Photo Album
Ag journalists on the GROWMARK media tour in Iowa last month had the chance to learn about N-Watch, which started this year as a small scale, pilot program by GROWMARK in partnership with FS Member Cooperatives.
The objectives of the program are to quantify the form of available, soil-applied nitrogen (N), where it is located, and what happens to the concentration of available N over time in the upper 0-12 and 12-24 inch profiles of the soil.
“We go out after harvest and take an inventory of plant available nitrogen,” explained GROWMARK Agronomy Services Manager Dr. Howard Brown. “Once we have that determination, we take composite samples after that every 2-4 weeks, track the nitrogen until it freezes, then after it thaws in the spring we’ll continue to pull the samples to see if the residual nitrogen is still there.”
Brown says it’s not an exact science, “but it’s a move in the right direction, this is what we need to be doing.” GROWMARK has over 45 sites in Illinois now and they are now moving in to new sites in Iowa, where we heard about the program last week during a GROWMARK media tour.
GROWMARK is so excited about the N-Watch concept that they want it to spread quickly. “We came up with the phrase (N-Watch) but we gave the license to the Illinois Council for Best Management Practices so that it can be utilized in the Midwest,” said Howard. “It would be great if everybody used N-Watch.”
Howard held a little impromptu news conference at the Machinery Shed in Des Moines to tell us all about N-Watch. Listen to Howard’s overview of N-Watch here and watch him in the video below: Dr. Howard Brown, GROWMARK
Hello from Savannah, GA and the 2012 National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA) convention. This is the Westin hotel next to the convention center this morning as I walked over to the fitness center. I’ll be using the #NAAA12 hashtag on Twitter.
While I’m here this week Cindy is in Chicago at the American Seed Trade Association CSS 2012. And Jamie Johansen is on her way to Louisville, KY for the Alltech Global 500. It’s a busy week for the ZimmComm team. So expect to see a lot of stories and interviews this week from the agriblogging highway.
Some people are better than others when it comes to sharing. At the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium there was plenty of information to share… including how to do a better job at sharing information, as well as using technology. Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt from the University of Montreal was one of the presenters who really promoted that sharing will be the true key to eradication of PRRS.
“We know how to eradicate diseases. We know how to biosecure farms. But when it comes to regional disease control, what we need to understand is that we need to share information,” he said. Vaillancourt admitted that since we are dealing with personalities, it’s difficult to get everyone on board, and just one or two individuals can interrupt the information flow. He believes that the seminar BIVI sponsored is a good step to making sure information is shared and PRRS is closer to eradication. “Training and knowledge brings attitude change, and that is critical. When you want to get compliance or a paradigm shift, people need to be fed information, and they need to be able share it with others to eventually come to a conclusion that they need to engage in a different way from what they used to do. So this kind of meeting is quite critical.”
Vaillancourt added that there must be a regional approach to PRRS eradication, because it can’t be done just one farm at a time.
Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Vaillancourt here: Interview with Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt
You’ve heard the expression, can’t see the forest for the trees. Well, when it comes to the PRRS eradication conversation at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium, you have to make sure you’re seeing the big picture without missing important details.
“Important stuff has some different levels – the micro level, the macro level and the meta level. The big picture most applies to the meta level, but the micro and macro levels has more to do with information people need to make decisions,” explained Dr. Dale Polson, who works in a technical resource capacity for BIVI in Des Moines during a break after his talk entitled, “Sufficient Surveillance for ARC&E: Getting the big-picture without missing the important stuff.” He said there are ways to gather information at all three levels without leaving one out. He added the limitations on some information gathering has been the high cost of getting that data, and that’s where they need to find surveillance approaches that are effective and economical.
Polson said there also needs to a common language to promote better collaboration. And he believes a meeting, such as this one sponsored by BIVI, is key. “Venues like this, opportunities like this are absolutely… required to facilitate that type of interaction.”
Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Polson here: Interview with Dr. Dale Polson
One of the talks at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium was dubbed “Unreasonable Expectations,” given by Dr. Eric Neuman, originally from Illinois, but now a veterinary epidemiologist with Massey University in New Zealand. Part of the “unreasonable expectation” in PRRS eradication could be thinking the disease can be solved easily. The problem is, the last lingering cases of the swine diseases seem to keep it going. Neuman calls it an anti-Pareto Effect, referencing the Pareto principle that says taking care of 20 percent of causes, solves 80 percent of the problems, the low-hanging fruit researchers look for. But in disease eradication, especially with PRRS, it’s flipped around.
“We can get rid of 99 percent of the cases, [but] it’s the last 1 percent [that can’t be solved] that make the difference,” Neuman says. In addition, he said there’s plenty of surveillance information about PRRS… maybe to the point of information overload. “We don’t need more information… I just need the right information.”
Neuman added that he likes where the industry is at this moment, but he’s worried there’s not enough diverse thinking contributing to a wider spectrum of answers. He said we know how to take PRRS out of a single farm, but we don’t know how to eliminate it on a larger scale. Neuman hopes that meetings like this one will foster more creative thinking.
Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Neuman here: Interview with Dr. Eric Neuman
While Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica might be one of the key players in swine vaccines, the company’s 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar was not about selling inoculations.
“The reason [we created this symposium] was [there was] a lot of frustration about how to control PRRS. We didn’t really make the progress we thought we should be making, and we found out we had to take a different approach to things,” explained Dr. Stephen Lange, Head of Global Marketing Swine for BIVI, during the seminar held in conjunction with the International PRRS Symposium. He said meetings like this one helps promote a dialogue between all the key players on how to move forward together. In addition, BIVI offers veterinarians and representatives in the field, as well as a dedicated PRRS solutions team… all to promote communications. “What we want to do is partner with our customers to come up with a holistic approach to disease control.”
Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Lange here: Interview with Dr. Stephen Lange
