USDA Changing Report Release Times in 2013

Cindy Zimmerman

USDA is changing the release time of certain key statistical reports beginning in January 2013.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced that the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB) will begin issuing several major USDA statistical reports at 12:00 p.m. EDT beginning in January 2013. The current USDA release time of 8:30 a.m. EDT will remain in effect until January 1, 2013. USDA statistical reports affected are: World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, Acreage, Crop Production, Grain Stocks, Prospective Plantings, and Small Grains Summary. The time for livestock reports currently released at 3:00 p.m. will not change.

Between June 8 and July 9, 2012, USDA sought public comment on the release times for several major statistical reports in response to changes in market hours by major commodity exchanges. Stakeholders submitted 147 comments through the NASS online response site and via letter and e-mail. You can read those comments here.

Markets, USDA

John Deere’s New Breed of Gator

Cindy Zimmerman

John Deere has a brand new species of Gator that is out to chomp the competition when it comes to speed, power and agility.

“It’s the Gator RSX850i, our first recreational utility vehicle,” said Product Line Marketing Manager Kevin Lund, who introduced the new Gator at the 2012 Farm Progress Show . “With 62 horsepower and 53 mile an hour top speed, four-wheel independent multi-link suspension, it delivers the performance that you need and still has the capability that you expect from a John Deere Gator.”

Lund says utility vehicles have been a part of John Deere’s 175 year history for the past 25 years. “John Deere really started the utility vehicle industry in 1987 with the AMT600,” he said. That evolved over the next few years into the Gator by 1993 and has continued to evolve with new models over the years.

Listen to my interview with Kevin from FPS here: John Deere's Kevin Lund

2012 Farm Progress Show Photo Album

Audio, Farm Progress Show, John Deere

It’s an iPhone World

Melissa Sandfort

Our latest ZimmPoll asked the question, “Do you plan to buy an iPhone 5?”

Our poll results: 20% said yes, upgrade my old iPhone; 4% said yes, get first iPhone; 24% said no, I’m Android; 32% said no, keep old iPhone; and 21% said they don’t want a smartphone.

Our new ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, “Have high fuel prices had an impact on your farm/business?” We’ve seen fuel prices go up quite a bit lately so we want to know – is it impacting your daily farm/business? What do you think?

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.

Technology, ZimmPoll

Call from the Combine for Farm Bill Now

Cindy Zimmerman

Congress is back in session for a couple of days this week, but all indications are that no action will be taken on a farm bill at this point before the current bill expires.

Knowing how fluid the situation in Washington can be, that’s no reason to give up hope yet and National Corn Growers Association president Garry Niemeyer says they are urging farmers to call Congress from their combines to make their voices heard. “This being Farm Safety Week, pull your combine over and shut it down, but call your congressman,” Garry said. “Tell them exactly what you think. That’s what we need.”

Garry says they are completely frustrated by the lack of action on a farm bill in the House. “This is just ridiculous,” he said. “We have big problems out here and (members of) Congress have really not done their job.”

Go to FarmBillNow.com for more information about contacting your congressional representative.

Listen to Garry’s comments here: NCGA president Garry Niemeyer

Audio, Corn, Farm Bill, Farming, NCGA

XS, Inc Testing AgVeritas on New Network Infrastructure

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast 365Let’s talk big data and precision agriculture in this week’s program. Listen in on a conversation I just had with Bill Barton, Principal, XS, Inc. and Timothy P. Carroll, Sr. Network Engineer. XS, Inc. just announced a major upgrade to their storage area network (SAN) infrastructure.

As a drought in the Midwest raises food prices, farming efficiency and getting the most from farm lands has become more essential than ever. XS, Inc is known in the food and agriculture industry for its ability to provide internet-based applications to help its agricultural clients drive efficiency and business value within their own organizations. To keep those online applications up and running, XS, Inc. selected Dell Compellent storage arrays, PowerEdge servers, PowerVault disk storage, and Latitude laptops. Since XS, Inc. moved to Dell Compellent this year, the company has maintained 99.999 percent storage availability to support the company’s rapid growth

This move comes in a timely fashion to support a new service offering, AgVeritas software.

XS, Inc. is the first agricultural SaaS provider with commercially accessible spatial statistics software, AgVeritasTM, transforming a traditionally expensive and time-consuming process to a highly available solution for agricultural clients. AgVeritas analyzes soil variability, elevation, drainage and the amount of sunlight and provides customers with the information they need to effectively manage their field. The company also collects more point of sale transaction data than any other service provider, providing its largely agricultural customers with insight and analytics to make educated business decisions on where and what to plant to optimize available farm land. The Dell infrastructure is critical to supporting XS, Inc.’s big data applications due to its flexibility and reliability.

So, what does all this mean? That’s what we talk about in this week’s ZimmCast. Today’s farmer has a real need for comprehensive information right now, right where he is, so he can make important farm management decisions. I was very intrigued by the idea of “spatial statistics” and Tim explains that in our conversation. From my perspective AgVeritas is once again showing the XS, Inc. is ahead of the curve. AgVeritas is currently in field trials and should be ready for prime time by first quarter 2013.

BTW. ZimmComm is about to go through a major upgrade of all our behind the scenes infrastructure which should be complete by mid November.

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: XS, Inc. & AgVeritas

Watch a video about AgVeritas:

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.

Agribusiness, Audio, Precision Agriculture, ZimmCast

No Rain for BASF Great Grower Kip Cullers

Cindy Zimmerman

Even a Great Grower needs a little help from above to end up with a great crop to harvest, but Southwest Missouri farmer Kip Cullers says they got virtually no rain this season, resulting in yields that are “dismal at best.”

When we talked to Kip back in April for the BASF Crop Protection Great Growers series, he was thrilled with how quickly planting had progressed and how fast the corn was emerging. But the weather rapidly took a turn for the worse after that time. “It hadn’t rained in Southwest Missouri since the first of April until last weekend,” he said. “It’s so hard to overcome no help from Mother Nature.”

The World Champion Soybean Grower says despite the lack of rainfall, they did have good luck controlling weeds this season. “Our herbicides this year worked really well,” he said. “We went back to more pre-emerge herbicides versus going over the top with generic glyphosate and have gotten along a lot better doing that.” Kip says this is the second year they have used that strategy.

Even though this is the second year Kip has faced weather challenges, he’s not looking to change much for 2013. “”Surely we won’t have three years of this in a row!,” he said. “There’s no reason to change a program because of one or two bad years because putting on fungicides and insecticides and taking care of your weeds does pay big dividends if it just rains some.”

We caught Kip this week as he was leaving the Farm Science Review in Ohio and heading to catch a flight to Sao Paulo. With the U.S. crop lowered due to weather this year, Kip says the South American crop is more important than ever. “We need Brazil to raise a big crop just because we’ve created all this demand,” he said. “We need to come through with our end of the bargain and supply all that.”

Kip, pictured here with his wife Michelle at the 2012 Commodity Classic, is a big believer in BASF Headline fungicide for plant health and knows it makes a difference when plants are stressed. “It’s not a miracle drug, but it sure will help you through some tough times,” he said, but noted that when there’s no rain at all, the best help is to “just do a lot more praying.”

Listen to an interview with Kip here: BASF Great Grower Kip Cullers

Audio, BASF

Milk Unleashed Educates Moms

Melissa Sandfort

Milk Unleashed has launched! It’s a campaign to educate moms on the importance of dairy, and offer easy ways to incorporate more milk into their families’ diets with shelf safe milk. It’s sponsored by Tetra Pak, makers of shelf safe cartons for milk, juice, soup, broth and other products.

Shelf safe milk is Grade A fluid milk that requires no refrigeration until the package is opened, thanks to ultra pasteurization and the special Tetra Pak carton. This eco-friendly packaging preserves all the wholesome goodness of milk and helps kids get the vitamins and nutrients of milk anytime, anywhere.

Agribusiness, Dairy

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

Zimfo Bytes

NAMA Fall Conference Next Week

Chuck Zimmerman

The NAMA Fall Conference is coming up quick! As in next week. Are you registered? The Fall Conference takes place September 25-26 in Minneapolis. Remember that this is a new format. It’s no longer the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference. Here’s some information you might find helpful.

Our venue is the Graves 601 Hotel which is located at 601 First Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN. The hotel is about a 20 minute drive from the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport. The Minneapolis/St.Paul Super Shuttle service is available to take you to and from the hotel. The shuttle cost is $16.00 one way, $32.00 for a roundtrip ticket and reservations are not necessary.

Once you arrive at the hotel and get checked in, the Fall Conference registration desk will be located in the Ballroom Foyer of the hotel. Stop by to pick up your name badge. The Fall Conference kicks off at 2 p.m. with keynote speaker Steven Schussler, founder of the Rainforest Café.

All Fall Conference sessions are business casual. For a schedule at a glance visit http://www.nama.org/fall/.

For a complete List of those registered for the NAMA Fall Conference visit http://www.nama.org/fall/2012Fallattendees.pdf (pdf).

You can follow along or contribute to the Twitter conversation at #NAMAFall12.

If you have other questions about the Fall Conference, give the office a call at (913) 491-6500. I’ll be attending the conference and hope to see you from there.

Ag Groups, NAMA

Cast Your Hambone Award Vote

Chuck Zimmerman

This is just too good to pass up. It’s the VPI Pet Insurance Hambone Award.

It’s that time of year again to crown America’s weirdest pet insurance claim with VPI’s Hambone Award!

From the cat that survived a 15-mile ride under the hood of a car to a potbellied pig that troughed through a medicine cabinet and lived to oink about it, VPI Pet Insurance has received more than a million insurance claims this year and narrowed the field for this year’s Hambone Award to twelve lucky finalists! Voting runs through 25 September on VPIHamboneAward.com. A press release with information on the nominees is attached.

The Hambone was named after a dog who was locked in a refrigerator and ate an entire Thanksgiving ham. After enjoying his meal (and suffering a mild case of hypothermia in the process), he made a full recovery. Who will join the ranks of previous Hambone winners like Harley, the Rhode Island pug who ate more than 100 rocks, or Ellie, the California dog who ate an entire beehive and thousands of its inhabitants?

Voting for the 2012 VPI Hambone Award will be open to the public Sept. 12-25, 2012 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 26, 2012. For regular updates on the 2012 contest, you can follow VPI on Twitter, like us on Facebook or sign up to receive emails on all things Hambone.

Insurance