Country star Steve Azar, who has had numerous hits including, “I Don’t Have To Be Me ‘Til Monday”, “Waitin’ On Joe”, and “Sunshine”, recently released a track entitled “American Farmer.” A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this song will be donated to local chapters of the FFA.
There’s a video for the track featuring pictures submitted by real working farmers and FFA Members that can be seen here:
You can purchase the track here.
You can read more about Steve here.
Attendees to the 2012 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit were greeted by the organizational team at the registration table. I spoke with AAA Communications Director Sarah Hubbart (right) to get a preview of our program.
Sarah says this is the 11th annual Stakeholders Summit which is held to bring together animal agriculture industry leaders to discuss issues. This year’s theme, Real Farmers Real Food: Celebrating Tradition and Technology, is meant to stimulate a discussion of both the legacy of the role that agriculture plays and the importance of new technologies. I think Sarah is the main social media handler so follow along with @AnimalAg for live tweets during the conference using the hashtag, #AAA12.
You can hear my interview with Sarah here: Interview with Sarah Hubbart
2012 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit Photo Album
Thanks to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and United Soybean Board for their sponsorship of our coverage of this year’s Summit.
The 2012 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakholders Summit is underway in Arlington, VA. We’ve just got our first session started so it will be a little while before I’ll have some interviews to share.
In the meantime, I’ve started a photo album for you. You can find them here: 2012 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit Photo Album
Thanks to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and United Soybean Board for their sponsorship of our coverage of this year’s Summit.
Growing up on a corn and soybean farm in Illinois is really what led Nick Fassler to his role at BASF Crop Protection in helping farmers keep their crops healthier.
“We raised about 1200 acres of corn and soybeans,” Nick told me during an interview at Commodity Classic, noting that he got his undergrad degree from Western Illinois and got a Masters in Crop Science from the University of Illinois. “The chemical protection business really intrigued me and encouraged me to go into graduate school.”
Nick started with BASF right out of graduate school eight years ago and is now Technical Market Manager, primarily responsible for row crop fungicides with corn and soybeans – mainly Headline and Headine AMP. “Our pipeline and the amount of products we’ve been launching in the last several years has kept us busy,” he says, adding that it’s rewarding for him to educate growers about those new products to bring value to their farm and help them be more productive.
Nick expects 2012 to be an interesting year for insect and disease pressure. “We have a lot of early season seedling diseases that seed treatments provide protection from, but with the foliar fungicides we’re primarily looking at those reproductive stages, July-August-September time frame,” he said, encouraging growers to take preventative action and do active scouting throughout the season.
Listen to my interview with Nick Fassler here: Nick Fassler with BASF
This week I get back on the agriblogging highway to the 2012 Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. My coverage will be made possible again this year by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the United Soybean Board. The theme is Real Farmers Real Food: Celebrating Tradition and Technology and I’ll be conducting interviews to share with you.
We have a full lineup of speakers who will help us learn effective communication strategies for how to deal with all that’s going on in this sector of the agribusiness industry today. We’ll hear lessons learned in Europe and from media representatives here in the United States. You can find an agenda here (pdf). My coverage starts on Wednesday.
BTW. You can tweet or follow along on Twitter using the conference hashtag which is #AAA12.
Our first BASF Production Poll is in the can and it was no surprise to find that growers are overwhelmingly optimistic about the 2012 growing season.
According to the poll:
65% of farmers think things are looking up this year.
29% say it’s about the same
Just 6% think this year will be worse and that winter did their fields no favors
With planting now well underway and ahead of normal, we are definitely hearing that weed resistance is a major concern this year – all over the country now. Each year the problem is getting more challenging, so we want to know – how are you controlling resistant weed on your farm this year?
When I was growing up, my mom had a job working at the high school and every morning she’d leave me with my day’s “to do” list of chores. This included dusting (which was my absolute least favorite), vacuuming, organizing, taking trash out, sweeping, watering plants … you see the trend. They were pretty mindless jobs that kept a 12-year-old out of trouble for most of the day and I didn’t mind because I could listen to music and be in my own little world. And, I always felt like my life had purpose because mom put ME in charge of making lunch for my dad. I was so proud that he no longer had to eat grilled cheese sandwiches.
*Note: There’s nothing wrong with grilled cheese sandwiches, in fact, I love them. But dad would butter some bread, put it in the toaster, slap on a slice of cheese and then microwave it. Talk about mushy, soggy sandwiches!! He had it all wrong.
Now that I’m older, I wish my dad would’ve included me in more farm chores so I could’ve learned about the in’s and out’s of agriculture; but he was of the thought that it wasn’t safe to have girls on the farm or around the big equipment. Nonetheless, the chores I had kept me occupied without the television on, and even when I got in trouble for just dusting around the knick-knacks instead of removing all of them and THEN dusting, that was my purpose those few summers until I got a job.
Things were a little different for my grandfather when he was a boy. Listen to his story about some of HIS boyhood chores.
Listen to Grandpa explainUntil we walk again …
While Cindy and Chuck are traveling around the country bringing you real agricultural news, I’m chillin on this beautiful day in my corn watch. Yes, you heard me right, I have an environmentally friendly watch that is partly made from corn.
Sprout Watches manufactures a line of eco-friendly watches that contain corn resin and bamboo. The watches come in multiple colors, but I chose white because of its neat design on the watch face. Each color watch has a different earth themed design to go along with its earth themed materials.
But back to the corn resin. It’s used as a component of the plastic, rather than using petroleum-based products. Nice, right? Sprout promotes the technology on its website and notes that corn resin pellets sequester far less fossil fuel and emits much less greenhouse gases. In addition, the watches are biodegradable and will not leach toxins into the ground. If you want to learn more, they have some neat graphics to demonstrate the process from stalk to watch.
So why am I sharing this story with you? Because it is another example of what our corn farmers across the country are bringing us today and a glimpse of what they will be helping to bring to use in the future – a myriad of products that are petroleum free.
