Bayer CEO at World Food Prize

Cindy Zimmerman

Bayer CropScience CEO Sandra Peterson gave one of the plenary addresses at the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue on the topic of how to feed a growing population.

“The one gift that eludes every single one of us, and especially those who are hungry, is time,” she said. “We have to feed nine billion people by 2050. We need to ramp up food production by 70% while conserving resources and preserving the planet, that is really no mean feat. 2050 may be decades away but if we want to feed the hungry and the parched planet tomorrow, we need to accelerate our sense of urgency today.”

Peterson talked about three ways she believes can help increase sustainable food production worldwide – empowering small holder farmers to become “agri-preneurs,” increasing innovation investments in climate mitigation and agricultural production, and enhance efforts to work together in a meaningful way. She said helping small holder farmers is critical because it is “the small holder farmer who produces most of the food consumed in their own countries where hunger is most prevalent” even in countries like Brazil.

“The way to solve this problem is one small holder farmer at a time,” Peterson said.

We just got word that Peterson is actually leaving her position as Bayer CropScience CEO at the end of November. Her successor will be Liam Condon who has been Managing Director of Bayer Vital GmbH, Leverkusen, and head of Bayer Pharma’s business in Germany since January 2010.

Listen to Peterson’s address at World Food Prize: Bayer CEO Sandra Peterson

View the World Food Prize Photo Album here.

AgWired coverage of the World Food Prize is sponsored by Elanco
Audio, Bayer, Food, World Food Prize

2012 Global Farmer Roundtable at WFP

Cindy Zimmerman

This year’s Global Farmer Roundtable at the World Food Prize hosted another great group of producers from around the world. Participants at this event included 17 producers from Canada, Honduras, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Swaziland, United Kingdom, Uruguay, US, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

This annual roundtable is organized by Truth About Trade & Technology (TATT), a nonprofit advocacy group led by farmers, and this is the 7th year for the event. “We took the farmers to Iowa State to the seed lab first then went out to Couser cattle farm at Nevada,” said TATT Chairman Emeritus Dean Kleckner. “But the best part was the roundtable discussion as they talked about what they saw in agriculture coming down the road and what they wanted to happen.”

Dean says most of the producers want to use biotechnology, even those coming from countries where the use of biotech crops is prohibited. “Biotech is here to stay, it’s the new conventional agriculture,” he said, noting that those producers who are unable to use biotech crops believe they are at a disadvantage. “And I agree with them that they are disadvantaged against the U.S. and Argentina and Canada and South Africa and other countries that do use biotechnology.”

Dean said Rajesh Kumar of Salem, India was the 2012 recipient of the Kleckner Trade & Technology Advancement Award. “India is a country that does not allow biotech except for cotton and they’ve had tremendous yield increases in India with biotech cotton,” he noted.

Rajesh farms 55 acres in southern India, using irrigation to grow sweetcorn, tomatoes, brinjal (eggplant) and other vegetables and he would very much like for his country to embrace biotechnology. “India has a desperate need for agricultural biotechnology,” he said in a TATT press release. “It is for our overall self-development that tools like biotechnology must be available so farmers can produce enough food for our people.”

You can see more photos from the TATT Global Farmer Roundtable on their Facebook page.
Listen to my interview with Dean from World Food Prize: Interview with Dean Kleckner

View the World Food Prize Photo Album here.

AgWired coverage of the World Food Prize is sponsored by Elanco
Audio, Biotech, Farming, International, Technology, World Food Prize

Time For Some Agronomics With ASFMRA

Chuck Zimmerman

It’s time for the 83rd Annual Meeting and Trade Show of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. For the first time I’ll be attending the meeting.

The meeting is co-located with Agronomics, a U.S. Ag Investment Conference. So it’s off to Indianapolis this week.

I wanted to know more about ASFMRA and Agronomics so I talked with Howard Halderman, Halderman Farm Management, this morning. Howard is not only a member of ASFMRA but has served on their executive council and is involved in planning the programming for this year’s Agronomics conference. Howard says the conference offers networking opportunities for investors and fund managers together with the land management, property valuation, agricultural consulting, and rural land & property sales experts of ASFMRA.

The conference has a program filled with speakers who will help attendees:

Know the true value as well as the potential value of a property;
Be able to identify and buy valuable land and make a good investment;
Have the right operators to manage the property for the long term;
Provide solid leases to obtain positive results on their investment;
Obtain annual reports that accurately indicate the value and worth of the property.

Listen to my interview with Howard here: Interview with Howard Halderman

Get the AgroNomics Vision 2013 Mobile Guide for your smart phone by scanning this code:

Sponsored by Monsanto, the AgroNomics – Vision 2013 Moible Guide will help you stay current with all the activities related to the ASFMRA Annual Meeting and AgroNomics – Vision 2013. Think of it as a show guide gone digital. Here you have access to all the event’s information in an easy and fun web-app.

There’s no need for an appstore. There’s no need for any downloads. The Agro-Nomics mobile guide is a web-app that works from your device’s browser whether it’s an iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows, and even a tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.

Ag Groups, Audio

The Namaste Farms Celebrity Shepherdess

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast 372Ever met a celebrity shepherdess? I have. She’s Natalie Redding, Namaste Farms. We met at the O.H. Kruse Grain & Milling dealer appreciation day.

Here’s Natalie (center) with friends during the Buying Show at the event last week. We talked about what she does and I think you’ll find it very interesting and entertaining. Natalie not only shepherds an “ever growing flock of sheep, goats, chickens, alpacas, Turkeys, Peafowl, horses, cows, llamas, etc…,” but she’s very involved in social media and has her own program on BlogTalkRadio.

Natalie is a big believer in the power of social media and the value it brings to farmers telling their story. She says, “I think it’s our responsibility as farmers. Instead of complaining that there’s a huge base of people who don’t like what we do. I think a lot of them don’t know what we do. And that’s our fault.” So Natalie says farmers have the responsibility to be good human beings and give back to the community so people want to hear what they have to say.

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: ZimmCast with Natalie Redding

Other place to find Natalie include Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

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

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page.

Audio, Farming, O.H. Kruse, ZimmCast

Pomegranate Rocks

Chuck Zimmerman

I am not a pomegranate fan boy, yet. Brett Frazier, Mayor of Madera, CA, is trying to convert me though via YouTube.

“We wanted to have a fun way to bring attention to pomegranates, and that Madera is the Heart of Pomegranate Country, so we figured what better way than with a parody video,” said Frazier.

The video is a parody of LFMAO’s hit Party Rock called Pomegranate Rock.

The video was shot over the course of a day featuring many tourist attractions in Madera and the area.

Madera is honoring their connection with pomegranates during the second annual Madera Pomegranate Celebration taking place Oct 27 through Nov 4. There is a softball tournament, golf tournament, pomegranate dinners, recipe contest and the Pomegranate Festival Nov 3 at the Madera Municipal Airport.

For more information, go to www.pomegranatefestival.com.

While they rock to pomegranates in California, the next festival opportunity near ZimmComm World Headquarters is the Gulf Coast Pirate Festival, home of the Pirate Riot. Argh!

Ag Groups, Food, Video

ZimmComm Moves to Joyent Cloud

Chuck Zimmerman

For several years now ZimmComm has enjoyed the web hosting services of the industry pioneer, Joyent. Why did we choose Joyent (originally TextDrive)? Because they not only provided state of the art hosting services and technology but seemed to embody that same willingness to try something new that we have. We have never been sorry.

This weekend we took another step forward with Joyent as we moved to the new Joyent Cloud.

Why constrain your ideas using yesterday’s cloud architecture and infrastructure? Build reliable and resilient applications on a high-performance cloud infrastructure service that powers many of the best mobile, social, gaming and e-commerce enterprises in the industry.

Joyent Cloud provides the essential features to develop, launch and scale web and mobile applications. Our high-performance cloud is designed to improve the productivity and success of application development teams and administrators. Rely upon the stability and reliability of Joyent to create your next innovation.

These folks have taken another big step forward with their move to the next innovation in cloud hosting. So we’re proud to be on their client list along with LinkedIn and Adobe!

But as good as the Joyent Cloud is we couldn’t do it without the Robert, the ZimmComm webmaster! Robert moved us without any disruptions or problems. He’s the best when it comes to not only what you see on our websites but also what you don’t see. So thanks to Robert and Joyent. Looking forward to many more years together.

ZimmComm Announcement

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • MGEX announced that its Board of Directors approved the 2012-2013 Board officers and committee representatives.
  • Neil Dobbins is the new CEO of Rabo AgriFinance.
  • A recent Farm Journal Pulse poll shows America’s producers overwhelmingly support candidate Mitt Romney in the upcoming presidential election.
  • Pear Bureau Northwest has named Meijer as the 2012 Pear Retailer of the Year for its outstanding pear merchandising program.
Zimfo Bytes

50 Year Anniversary Issue of Agri Marketing Magazine

Chuck Zimmerman

Agri Marketing magazine is celebrating 50 years. Here’s where you can get your copy of the 50th anniversary commemorative issue. Now for a message from Publisher Lynn Henderson.

Hearty thanks to the magazine’s subscribers, advertisers, authors and all of the people who have worked for or been affiliated with the magazine since its inception in 1962.

You can read the issue now by clicking here. On the first screen that opens are instructions on how to navigate through it.

If you have difficulty in opening it or have any suggestions, please send your comments to info@AgriMarketing.com.

You can still view the online version of the annual Agri Marketing Services Guide by clicking here.

We want to thank Agri Marketing Digital’s premiere sponsor, Farm Journal Media, for making this service available to you!

Best Regards,
Lynn Henderson
Publisher/Editorial Director

Media

New FFA Officers Announced

Chuck Zimmerman

At the conclusion of the 2012 National FFA Convention the new officer team was elected. UF Gators student Clay Sapp was elected to serve as National FFA president. How ’bout them Gators!

“It will be my mission to activate change and growth in the National FFA Organization,” he said. “I plan to develop strong relationships, be a champion of FFA and agricultural education and seek new ways to strengthen student experiences within FFA.”

Joining Sapp on the 2012-13 National FFA Officer team are Kalie Hall of Georgia as national secretary, Joenelle Futrell of Kentucky as Eastern Region vice president, Lindsey Anderson of California as Western Region vice president, Brennan Costello of Nebraska as Central Region vice president and Wiley Bailey as Southern Region vice president.

For the next year, the group will travel more than 100,000 miles across the country to engage top leaders in business, government and education. The national officers will lead personal growth and leadership training seminars for FFA members. The team will help set policies that will guide the future of FFA and promote agricultural literacy.

Ag Groups, FFA

O.H. Kruse is a Family Business

Chuck Zimmerman

When O.H. Kruse Grain & Milling decided to hold a dealer appreciation day they viewed it as an investment in their dealers and their brand name according to Kevin Kruse, President/CEO. He says it is an opportunity to re-present their brand. Kevin spoke to attendees during the evening dinner.

I spoke with Kevin before dinner and asked him what message he wanted to share with the folks attending. He said, “We’re a family business and that they’re part of our family. We really appreciate and are proud to be doing business with these people. It’s a thank you and it’s a discussion of how we can work together to improve both our businesses. That’s the focus.” Kevin also spoke about the challenges in the feed industry and what he sees in the future for the company.

Listen to my interview with Kevin here: Interview with Kevin Kruse

O.H. Kruse Photo Album

Agribusiness, Audio, Feed, O.H. Kruse