AgWired will be at the Western Farm Show and with this map you can easily find us. The show runs February 25-27 in Kansas City, MO and we’re a media partner for the first time.
I’ll be conducting social media seminars on Friday and Saturday and providing general show coverage right here. If you stop by the booth you’ll be able to enter a drawing for an iPod Touch courtesy of ZimmComm and our sponsor Raven Industries.
If you can see the logo then you know where I’ll be this week. That’s right. Time to get back on the agriblogging highway and head to Louisville for the National Farm Machinery Show.
This will be the 46th show and once again it will be combined with the annual Championship Tractor Pull now in its 43rd year. Last year’s combined attendance was 299,137. This year you can expect eight interconnected exhibit halls totaling more than 1.2 million square feet of indoor exhibit space and containing more than 850 agricultural displays.
Here’s hoping for that warm weather trend to continue. I’ll have coverage starting on Wednesday.
Okay, so you probably can’t back-up your files in a safe deposit box unless you make photocopies of them and put them in … you guessed it … another safe deposit box. This is an old-timer version of a PDA, or an iPad, or whatever hand-held device is small enough to fit in your plaid shirt pocket and hold all the data you can dream of and more.
But back in the late 1800s, this was where all farm records were kept. This was from my great-great grandfather John Henry (a good, strong farmer’s name) who passed away in 1936. On the top is engraved what appears to be a social security number, but after doing a little research, it must have been his son’s SSN because they didn’t start issuing them until 1936. John Henry died before he even “became a number”. All of the numbers that mattered to him and to his farm were kept in this steel safe deposit box.
From the safe deposit box, we’ve grown to notepads and pencils to electronic ear tags for livestock and computer farm management software.
Recently, I bought myself a portable external hard drive for backing up my computer files. But I looked down and realized it’s plastic. (Right? It’s made of plastic and a little metal.) So if our house goes up in flames, it does me no good unless it’s where? That’s right. In my fireproof safe deposit box! Maybe we haven’t come as far as I thought.
Until we walk again …
Syngenta Seeds announced today it has received full deregulation from USDA for corn amylase (Event 3272), the first corn output trait designed to help ethanol industry become more efficient, profitable and environmentally friendly.
Syngenta Seeds plans to sell corn containing Event 3272 under the “Enogen” seed brand. “Enogen corn is a breakthrough product that provides ethanol producers a proven means to create more value per gallon while offering targeted corn growers an opportunity to cultivate a premium specialty crop in a contracted, closed production system,” said David Morgan, president of Syngenta Seeds. “Also, Enogen corn can substantially reduce the energy and water consumed and the carbon emissions associated with ethanol production.”
The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is happy with USDA’s decision.
“Corn amylase is the first processing output trait to be scrutinized by our regulatory system,” said NCGA president Bart Schott, a grower from North Dakota. “The potential importance of output traits to growers and industry will only increase as other output traits are developed.”
Corn amylase is approved in Japan, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Amylase was found to be safe for food and feed by the Food and Drug Administration in 2007.
Implementing legislation aimed a reforming Wall Street could have an impact on farmer cooperatives.
As the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC) implements provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act involving over the counter (OTC) derivatives, the Commission must ensure that farmer co-ops can continue to effectively manage risk and offer hedging tools to their farmer-owners, a representative of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives (NCFC) said during a hearing in Washington this week.
The comments were made by Ed Gallagher, president of Dairy Risk Management Services, a division of Dairy Farmers of America, and vice president of risk management for Dairylea Cooperative, at a House Committee on Agriculture hearing looking at implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
“Due to market volatility in recent years, cooperatives are increasingly using OTC products to help them diversify their exposure by customizing their hedges,” Gallagher testified. “In addition, OTC derivatives offer cooperatives the ability to provide specialized products to farmers and ranchers to help them better manage their risk and returns. A co-op can aggregate its owner-members’ small volume hedges or forward contracts and offset that risk with a futures contract or by entering into another customized hedge via the swaps market.”
For an example, Gallagher discussed the ways in which his co-op helps their dairy farmer members hedge against increases in feed prices. Without the co-op involvement, he emphasized, individual producers would be unable to mitigate this risk effectively.
“Many producers are not able to use the futures markets to hedge input risk because of the larger volumes underlying the relevant futures contracts,” Gallagher said in his written testimony. “Furthermore, corn and soybean contracts do not trade on a monthly basis—while most of our members purchase feed on a monthly basis.”
A wide variety of farmer co-ops, including those in the grain and livestock sectors, use OTC derivatives to offer similar products.
AgWired ZimmPoll sponsor, Rhea + Kaiser, has just added almost a dozen new folks to the team in the areas of account services, public relations, media and project management. The expansion follows the agency’s acquisition of new clients and expanding partnerships with several current clients.
“We’re always looking for great people who have the critical strategic focus needed for our success and the success of our clients,” said Diane Martin, CEO of Rhea + Kaiser. “We’re pleased work is steadily increasing enabling us to attract individuals who are smart and passionate about what we do and about our clients’ businesses.”
Recent great additions to the R+K team include: Jayma Appleby, senior account executive, PR; Kim Berns, senior account executive; Diane Chastain, project management lead; Sarah Galdi, assistant account executive; Karen Harley, media buyer; Greg Lammert, senior account supervisor, PR; Christina Leggio, media accountant; Marcy Miller, senior media planner; Stephen Samelko, account executive; Rebecca Silva, assistant account executive; and William Rongey, senior account executive.
“We’re optimistic about 2011,” said Martin. “We have great clients who value the thinking our teams are bringing to the table and who are empowering us to do great work on their behalf.”
In addition to the new hires above, there are several open positions still waiting to be filled. Interested? Check out http://www.rkconnect.com/Careers.aspx.
We always ask, “What’s new?” when conducting interviews and during the recent International Poultry Expo, our sponsor, Novus International had some news.
I spoke with Jared about DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid. He calls it the king of the omega-3 fatty acids. Besides being very healthy for humans it also is for poultry. It helps promote growth and the nutritional value of eggs and meat. According to Jared the “new” comes in with their product TREVERA. This is an algae based omega-3 DHA which they just launched. He says you can find omega-3 eggs in the grocery store now and that you should look for ones that say DHA.
You can listen to my interview with Jared here: Interview With Jared Hux
2011 International Poultry Expo/International Feed Expo Photo Album
AgWired IPE/IFE coverage sponsored by: 
Apps for trade shows and conferences are becoming more and more popular. The next one I’ll be using is the National Ethanol Conference App in Phoenix.
* Get 24 hour access to unique, on-the-go information, maps and networking.
* Organize your schedule.
* Navigate using the conference map.
* Stay in the know with important alerts and the most up-to-date event schedule.
* Download speaker and sponsor information.
Download the App! It’s FREE.
Instructions:
For iPhones, iPod Touch and iPad: From your phone, visit the App Store and search for NEC 2011.
For Blackberry, Droid and all other smartphones: From your phone, point your mobile browser to http://m.core-apps.com/nec2011 (the system will determine your phone type for proper download for your device). Then bookmark this page on your phone for easy future access.
