2025 Tech Hub Live

Harold Beaver Wins John Deere Chip Foose 4020 Tractor

Chuck Zimmerman

John Deere just announced the winners of their Big Buck Sweepstakes. The big prize winner is Harold Beaver who receives the Chip Foose customized John Deere 4020 Tractor.

As the grand prize winner of the John Deere Big Buck Sweepstakes, Beaver not only won the customized John Deere 4020 Tractor but also met and talked with Chip Foose, who designed and modified one of Deere’s most widely used and popular tractor models ever produced. From March through July, the Big Buck 4020 Tractor toured the country as part of the John Deere Drive Green Tractor Experience events.

Beaver filled out the winning entry at the James River Equipment John Deere dealership in Statesville, North Carolina, when he was getting parts for a lawnmower. He thought it was a great idea to use Chip Foose to promote the John Deere 4020.

In addition to the grand prize Foose-customized 4020 Tractor, John Deere is giving away three Gator XUVs as first-place prizes. Recipients of these prizes are: Stephen Hendricks, St. Louis, Mo.; Philip Cripe, North Manchester, Ind.; Robert Leis, Togo, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Agribusiness, John Deere, Tractor

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • The Oklahoma Beef Council announced a $250,000 gift to Oklahoma State University’s newly created endowed professorship in honor of animal scientist and autistic expert Dr. Temple Grandin whose life story, put to film, recently won seven Emmy’s.
  • Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced five new inductees into the USDA Hall of Heroes. Click here for the complete list.
  • New leadership has been elected by the Farm Financial Standards Council which recently held its 2010 conference and annual meeting.
  • FMC Corporation announced the introduction of Authority XL Herbicide, part of the Authority herbicide line of products for soybeans.
Zimfo Bytes

JoAnn Alumbaugh Joins McCormick Company

Chuck Zimmerman

Congratulations to JoAnn Alumbaugh on her new job with McCormick Company!

JoAnn has been working for Farms.com and has been a solid supporter of professional organizations like the American Agricultural Editors Association and International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. I hope she knows that the fine print in her membership said she had to stay involved “for life” even if she made a career move. LOL.

JoAnn is pictured kissing her “Best Dressed Minnesotan” award at the Ag Media Summit. Notice she’s holding up her “mini soda.” Get it? Yeah, took me a minute too.

Have you made a career move? Let the AgWired community know. We like to keep up.

Agencies, Media

Farm Market iD Partners with Successful Farming

Cindy Zimmerman

ZimmCast 272Successful Farming® and Farm Market iD have joined forces to create “SFMiD,” what they are calling “the most comprehensive agricultural and rural lifestyle database in the industry.” SFMid will offer a wide variety of options for multi‐sourced farm and rural lifestyle data, as well as customized solutions to help agrimarketers better understand owner/operator relationships, establish electronic communication data points, and know the farmer as an individual person.

That got our attention, so we called John Montandon, President of Farm Market iD, to find out more about what this new partnership has to offer. In this ZimmCast, John talks about how they are using the latest technology – both in communications and agriculture – to offer agrimarketers the most comprehensive information about their customers.

Find out more here: ZimmCast 273

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsors, Novus International, and Leica Geosytems for their support.

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our a Subscribe page

Audio, ZimmCast

The Evolution of Online Agvocacy

Chuck Zimmerman

While in Chicago I finally got to meet Kelly Rivard who I’ve been connected with via AgChat for some time. She was a participant in the first ever AgChat Foundation Agvocacy 2.0 Training Conference and produced a great video for it. Kelly is also a student at North Central College in Naperville, IL.

Farmers have a story and are learning to tell it more and more. This video was featured at the opening session of the AgChat Foundation’s first ever “Agvocacy 2.0 Training Conference” in Rosemont, Illinois where 50 farmers gathered to learn more about the tools of the trade.

“Agvocacy” is the term coined to represent the act of advocating agriculture. The AgChat Foundation works to empower a community of connected and enthusiastic “agvocates” through social media. This video gives insight on some of the tools used and some of the facts that drive the agvocacy campaign. Every farmer and rancher has a story, and it is time for them to share it.

Uncategorized

Charleston|Orwig Goes Blue For Global Genes Project

Chuck Zimmerman

I’ve heard of going green but going blue is good too. That’s what the staff at Charleston|Orwig, Inc. is doing by wearing blue jeans each day during September. They’re doing it “not for comfort, but for hope.”

Wearing jeans serves as a reminder to vote for the Global Genes Project in the online Pepsi Refresh Program.

“We are partnering with the Children’s Rare Disease Network to support the Global Genes Project, which is a grassroots effort to raise awareness for children suffering from rare diseases,” said Mark Gale, president at C|O. “We are wearing jeans as part of the ‘wear that you care’ concept, and as a reminder to vote every day at vote4hope.org.”

There are currently more than seven thousand rare diseases identified, affecting 30 million people in the U.S. alone, 75 percent of whom are children. The Global Genes Project raises awareness of genetic diseases and generates funds to promote collaborative research into disease causes and treatments. Read More

Agencies

Crank Up Your Flip Audio

Chuck Zimmerman

Speaking of Flip cameras. I’ll bet you were speaking of them after seeing them earlier today on AgWired. It’s a little bit of a gadget Monday to get you started on your farm communications and marketing week. You know who your gadget guru is don’t you?

So, if you’ve been wondering how to record better audio on your Flip it looks like Blue Microphones is coming to the rescue with their just announced – Blue Mikey for Flip.

As part of the new Designed for Flip™ accessory line, Mikey for Flip connects to all FlipPort™-enabled Flip video cameras and features Blue Microphones’ premium capsules for enhanced recording of everything from a whisper to a rock concert.

Mikey for Flip features two of Blue’s custom-tuned condenser capsules for professional-quality stereo recording. Users can choose between ‘Loud’ or ‘Automatic’ sensitivity settings, allowing users to record any volume level clearly, from a marching band to a wedding. Mikey for Flip also features a mic input jack for easy plug-in of additional microphones like a lavalier, handheld or corded interview microphone. Mount the Flip video camera on Mikey’s built-in tripod mount or stand it upright on Mikey’s wide base design for hands-free recording.

Of course you’ll have to wait until January since the Mikey for Flip, MSRP $69, will debut at CES 2011.

Equipment

99 Jars of Food on the Wall

Melissa Sandfort

It’s a color explosion – there are dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, beet pickles, beets, beans, stewed tomatoes, tomato juice, kraut, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries, apple butter, plum butter, jelly and jam! And in total, back in her prime, my grandmother used to can at least 200 jars of food each year to feed their family.

Next summer, in hopes of preserving a farm-wife tradition, I’m going to have Grandma teach me how to preserve food. She learned canning from her mom and from 4-H and it’s time to pass that tradition along before it’s lost.

The process of canning has changed and morphed over the years. Grandma used to use zinc lids and a rubber ring – now, they’re self-sealing metal rings and inserts. They used to can meat (beef and chicken), but meat lockers changed that. The pressure canner also changed the face of the job and sped up the process as compared to using the old boiler or kerosene stove. The advent of freezers meant bags and jars of corn, apples, pumpkin, gooseberries, strawberries and rhubarb could go in the freezer instead of on the shelves.

But even with the modern technologies, it’s not an easy process. First, you have to actually grow your produce! Then there’s the picking, cleaning, stemming, cutting, sometimes pre-cooking, making sure lids are sealed and adding paraffin to the top of jams and jellies.

My Grandma is now 85. At about 200 jars per year since she was 18, I’ll let you do the math.

Until we walk again…

Uncategorized

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

Zimfo Bytes

GIPSA Rule Topic at Legislative Conference

Cindy Zimmerman

The proposed Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rule was a big topic of discussion at last week’s National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.

Andy Vance with Buckeye Ag Radio has some great coverage from the event, including an interview with USDA chief economist Joe Glauber about the proposed rule. Secretary Vilsack continued to say it was not appropriate for him to comment on the rule. Vilsack has basically made no comment about the rule since it was released in June and he was quoted in the official release saying, “This proposed rule will help ensure a level playing field for producers by providing additional protections against unfair practices and addressing new market conditions not covered by existing rules.”

In Andy’s interview, Dr. Glauber seems to distance USDA “the department” from “the agency” GIPSA. “GIPSA has put out a proposed rule. We have some responsibilities within the department to review rules and so we had looked at early versions of the proposed rule that went out,” says Glauber. “The agency will be reviewing all the comments. We will be looking to see how the agency addresses the comments in terms of the costs and benefits of the rule.”

Glauber had no real direct answers to Andy’s questions about the lack of an economic impact study on the proposed rule and the potential for unintended consequences. He agrees that alternative marketing arrangements have been beneficial for many producers and he agrees that “from an economist’s perspective” the various livestock segments – beef, pork and poultry – are very different in terms of production and marketing. Dr. Glauber said they were glad to hear from the cattlemen who came to Washington last week and encouraged them to make comments about how the proposed rule would affect them.

Y’all really should listen to this interview – it’s posted below. Thanks, Andy! Andy also has good interviews with Mike Engler of Cactus Feeders and Nebraska Cattlemen’s president Bill Rishel.

Andy Vance Interview with USDA's Joe Glauber
Audio, GIPSA, NCBA, USDA