This year’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences attracted about the same size crowd as last year according to National Cotton Council Vice President of Producer Affairs, Craig Brown. I sat down with Craig to find out how he thought things were going and to talk about upcoming format changes for the annual event.
Craig says this is the second year they have shortened the production conference and added more seminars and educational sessions. There are a lot of them! Workshops were very well attended and in fact Craig says they had to add chairs to some of them. He mentioned the social media sessions which is a first. As Craig puts it, “everyone here’s got something strapped to their hip,” referring to all the smartphones in use. It sounds like the Cotton Council is getting ready to go more “social!”
We also discussed the major changes coming to Beltwide after next year’s event. Starting in 2014 Beltwide will only be a 1 1/2 day event without the production conference and trade show. It’ll focus in on technical sessions. This decision has come after a lot of study and thought during the last couple years.
To learn more about the changes coming to the Beltwide listen in to this week’s program: Beltwide Cotton Conferences
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2012 Beltwide Cotton Conferences Photo Album
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Our good friend is being celebrated today for 20 years of service to America’s pork industry. As Mike notes, Cindy “helped guide the pork industry through the price collapse in 1998 and through the H1N1 disaster in 2009. She’s also helped the industry avert a few thousand other crises — large and small — in between and since. And crisis management is just a small part of her job description. We all can be thankful she has chosen to dedicate these past 20 years to serving pork producers.”
The 10-question game and corresponding videos encourage consumers to explore what cattle eat from birth to the feedyard. The first-of-their-kind “Cow Chow” videos were filmed almost exclusively by cattle in Kansas, South Dakota, Texas and Florida wearing specially-rigged GoPro cameras to share this important animal care story from the cows’ eye view.
Doug Wagner became president effective January 1, assuming this position from Lorie Jocius, who now is vice president.