Mac Light

Chuck Zimmerman

Good morning from the agriblogging highway. My Mojo (mobile journalism kit) is getting lighter. This is my new Macbook Air. Came in yesterday afternoon and I am hoping I’ve got it all set up. I’ll find out this week in Canada while attending the 2011 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress.

First impressions of the Macbook Air are very positive. I have a 13″, i7 processor w/256GB SSD. It’s fast and thin and light and so far so good. With this new laptop I did not do a Time Machine restore from my other Macbook Pro backup. I started clean and had to install all programs and transfer only the files I want. I’m going to use an external drive even more to keep this hard drive as clean as possible.

Time to board so I’ll see you from Canada!

Uncategorized

ScoutPro Announced at FPS

Chuck Zimmerman

Entrepreneurship is alive and well at Iowa State University. I visited with Michael Koenig at the Farm Progress Show about it.

ScoutPro, a business started by 3 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences students at Iowa State University will be launching their first products: ScoutPro Lite™ Soybean and ScoutPro Lite™ Corn at the 2011 Farm Progress Show on Aug 30-31 and Sept. 1, in Decatur, IL.

Seniors Michael Koenig, Holden Nyhus and junior Stuart McCulloh founded the new venture, ScoutPro, a software applications development company, following their involvement in an entrepreneurship in agriculture course taught by Kevin Kimle, director of the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative at Iowa State University.

The company has developed a crop scouting app which eliminates the guess work in crop scouting, while increasing producer’s efficiency and profitability. Through systematic questions, the app narrows down pests to ensure a correct identification. Additionally, the app creates field specific crop scouting reports to help producers make better management decisions. The ScoutPro Lite™ apps are compatible on all smartphones, iPads or other tablet devices.

In addition to the app, producers will also be able to manage all scouting reports and gain access to aggregated pest data through their own private, secure website.

ScoutPro Interview

2011 Farm Progress Show Photo Album

AgWired Coverage of the Farm Progress Show is sponsored by New Holland GROWMARK Trellis Growing Systems
Agribusiness, Audio, Farm Progress Show, Precision Agriculture

Pioneer Offers Local Resources to Improve Profitability

Cindy Zimmerman

farm progress show 2011Pioneer Hi-Bred’s big announcement at the 2011 Farm Progress Show was a new program focused on evaluating innovative production practices on a local basis through a national network of agronomy trial managers (ATMs).

“The focus is really local,” says Curt Clausen, Pioneer agronomy sciences director. “It’s really about local crop management, innovation and knowledge.”

Pioneer is doubling the number of ATMs currently in the field to over 40 in the next three years. “This is the next level of service to our customers,” Curt said during the Pioneer press conference at FPS.

Listen to Curt’s press comments, introduced by Pioneer’s Jerry Harrington, here. Curt Clausen of Pioneer

farm progress show 2011One of the real live Pioneer ATMs out in the field is Jake Vossenkemper from the Decatur area, who says growers have hundreds of agronomy questions that they want answered. “They want to do the best job they can just like everyone else and our job is to step in and help them answer those questions,” Jake says.

Jake says Pioneer has been performing some specific experiments in certain regions, like an intensive soybean management experiment to look at factors that have been shown to consistently increase soybean yields. “Some of those factors include seed treatments, foliar applied pesticides and fungicides, as well as planting date,” he said.

Listen to Jake’s comments here. Pioneer ATM Jake Vossenkemper

2011 Farm Progress Show Photo Album

AgWired Coverage of the Farm Progress Show is sponsored by New Holland GROWMARK Trellis Growing Systems
Farm Progress Show, Farming, Pioneer

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, announced the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Awards, a new program to recognize dairy farms, businesses and collaborative partnerships for efforts that deliver outstanding economic, environmental and/or social benefit.
  • The 2012 Potato Industry Leadership Institute will be held Feb. 23 to March 1, 2012. The Institute is an eight-day program designed to identify, develop and cultivate new leaders within the potato industry.
  • The USDA announced that Washington state potato growers voted to continue their federal marketing order program.
  • According to data released by the federal government, U.S. ethanol exports in July set a new monthly record.
Zimfo Bytes

David Aeschliman Starts Growth Enterprises

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast 318In this week’s program let’s get caught up with Dave Aeschliman, Growth Enterprises. If you don’t know David then you’re missing one of the original Advertising Rat Pack members who took this dude under their wing starting at NAMA meetings once upon a time. We got connected via my post last week about missing Gary McKenna, who was also one of the members of that infamous group.

David has just recently started a new business called Growth Enterprises. He works directly with companies to create a strategic growth plan that’s very comprehensive. He also works on a pay for performance basis. In our conversation he provides a phone number if you want to reach him. His business is so new the website isn’t ready for prime time yet. David says new communications technology have certainly changed the way you do marketing today. I think you’ll appreciate some of his comments.

Listen to my conversations with Dave in this week’s ZimmCast: Growth Enterprises

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsor, GROWMARK, locally owned, globally strong, for their support.

This week’s program ends with with music from Music Alley. It’s “Oh Canada” by Danny Fong. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.

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, ZimmCast

Sturgis Coffee Company Serves Up Bliss

Chuck Zimmerman

I am a coffee snob. I admit it. And I know there are other coffee snobs out there. So when I find something good I like to share it. Most of you know that when I’m home it’s all about Coffee Zone. But when traveling it’s usually a Panera or a Starbucks.

That is unless I come across something like a Sturgis Coffee Company. I stopped in on my way out of Sturgis recently and I would go back. Well, only if I need to go to Sturgis. But you can order their coffee online! I brought back Bliss and we’re about out. Time to place an order. So what’s your favorite coffee or coffee place?

Food

AgWired a Seametrics Top 20 Agriculture Blog

Chuck Zimmerman

I just learned that the folks at Seametrics have named AgWired to their list of Top 20 Agriculture Blogs! They said this was based on “recommendations from other bloggers and because we think your blog provides awesome content for people interested in agriculture.”

Seametrics is a “water flow measurement company that helps farmers, manufacturers, and municipalities to reduce water use and save money.”

Thank you Seametrics. We’ll keep trying to earn it!

Uncategorized

Heartland NAMA Fun At Farm Progress Show

Chuck Zimmerman

The Heartland Chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association held a reception at the Farm Progress Show.

Here’s Susie Decker, Lisa Rigoni, Vicki Henrickson & Patty Kisner having fun in the shade.

I couldn’t make it, grrr! But I wanted to. Maybe in 2013?

To see who else had fun with Heartland NAMA you can see photos here.

2011 Farm Progress Show Photo Album

AgWired Coverage of the Farm Progress Show is sponsored by New Holland GROWMARK Trellis Growing Systems
Farm Progress Show, NAMA

NAMA ABEF Supporting New Agrimarketers

Chuck Zimmerman

There are many reasons to support the National Agri-Marketing Association’s Agribusiness Educational Foundation. In this chapter of my series of interviews with ABEF operational committee members we’ll hear why Sheri Seger, DTN/The Progressive Farmer, is a big supporter. Sheri is national accounts manager for the company. I visited with her at a recent stop on the agriblogging highway.

Sheri says she is happy to be involved with the foundation because when she started her career she didn’t know what the opportunities were. The ABEF provides and supports ways for others getting started in their careers to find the opportunities that exist. Examples include the NAMA student marketing competition as well as scholarships, student training and internships. She encourages contributions to the foundation and there are many ways to do so. You can find out more online.

Interview with Sheri Seger
Audio, NAMA

Growers Learn From Illinois Soybean Challenge

Cindy Zimmerman

farm progress show 2011Some of the high yielding innovators in the 2010 Illinois Soybean Yield Challenge were at the 2011 Farm Progress Show to talk about the program and what they learned.

The Shipman Elevator Team, sponsored by BASF, took first place in District 6 last year and also won the Novel Practices Award in the challenge funded by the Illinois soybean checkoff. Team member Dwayne Milner, pictured here with his BASF rep Kaleb Hellwig, says they are competing again this year to build on what they learned last season. “As a whole, we learned that we’ve got to manage soybeans, we’ve got to plant them early and we’ve got to manage more like corn,” Dwayne told me.

Teams of growers, working together in nine districts across Illinois, farm side-by-side plots using traditional techniques on one and innovative methods on the other. The common goals for all Challenge participants are to maximize soybean yields while producing valuable data that will benefit researchers and growers alike. The Shipman team averaged 85.3 bu/ac of the top five growers, which was the highest of all the district averages last year. “Everybody did a lot of different approaches, but our most common were seed treatments, planting early, fertility management, used Headline as our fungicide, used an insecticide on it and residual herbicides,” Dwayne says.

Listen to or download my interview with Dwayne here. Dwayne Milner Interview

2011 Farm Progress Show Photo Album

AgWired Coverage of the Farm Progress Show is sponsored by New Holland GROWMARK Trellis Growing Systems
Audio, BASF, Farm Progress Show, Soybean