New AgWired sponsor AgHaven is now ready for anyone in the agricultural industry to sign up. You can create a free account and use their one of a kind search engine or get social with their built in social networking tools.
This morning I spoke with Srik Soogoor, President (pictured left), who gave me some background on how the idea for AgHaven came about and the process he’s gone through to bring it to fruition. He says that about a year and half ago they developed a search engine for agriculture because there wasn’t one that provided dedicated ag search results. That search engine is available in AgHaven.com. But that’s not all you’ll find there. They decided to expand the project to include a social networking community and a marketplace where you can buy and sell products and services. Anyone can get started by creating a free profile. Let’s say you want to sell products. Once you’ve created your profile AgHaven allows you to easily start your own “store.” AgHaven also accepts advertising and that can be tied to search engine results as well as with video. Srik says they’re also in discussion with a number of ag media organizations about syndicating ag news content.
AgHaven has been in “beta” mode and I’ve been a beta tester. They’re still looking for comments and feedback so please feel free to let them know what you think.
You can listen to my interview with Srik here: Interview with Srik Soogoor
Visit our photo album often: 2011 Commodity Classic Photo Album
AgWired coverage of the 2011 Commodity Classic
is sponsored by: 
and 
The Commodity Classic trade show is now in session right after a ribbon cutting. I was a little slow on the trigger but there was a ribbon up there.
In the United States, Xemium will be a brand of fungicides, sold under the trade names Merivon™ fungicide, Priaxor™ fungicide and Systiva™ fungicide.
“Our history and experience with carboxamides led us to the discovery of Xemium, which will be a strong addition to our existing global fungicide portfolio,” said Dr. Ulf Groeger, BASF Global Project Leader for Xemium. “The unique mobility in the plant ensures a long-lasting preventative and curative effect to protect the crop from damaging fungal pathogens.”
Just to give you a contrasting look at Tampa, here’s one from last night of the convention center. I call it picture perfect and hope it stays that way!
Let me introduce you to 
We’ll have lots more details on Xemium, but here’s the bottom line. According to the research, Xemium has high intrinsic activity, long-lasting residual control, consistent distribution in the plant for preventative and curative effects, and broad spectrum control. Like Kixor herbicide, Xemium is a technology that will be used in a number of new fungicide products for a variety of different crops. BASF is hoping for approval by early 2012.
One of those experts was an old friend, former Secretary of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter, who is pictured here with Bayer CropScience executives Mike Deall and Alan Ayers. It’s been a couple of decades since I had the opportunity to interview Clayton, so it was a real treat to spend a few minutes with him to get his thoughts on agriculture and trade policy, 2011 and beyond.