Interact With International Grains Buyers

Chuck Zimmerman

usgcOne of my upcoming stops on the agriblogging highway will be the U.S. Grains Council and Renewable Fuels Assocation, Export Exchange. The event is taking place October 6-8 in Chicago, IL. If you’re in the grains business, especially dealing with DDGS then this is the place to meet with international buyers. I spoke with USGC CEO Tom Dorr about the event. He says that there will be more than 150 international buyers networking with over 300 U.S. producers and others involved in the industry. He says it’s a continuation of a series of programs that began about four years ago.

The program is designed to allow people to make connections and better understand the product. This is the first time the Grains Council has had a sponsor like the RFA. Another new thing this year is a focus on the coarse grains markets due to the global demand growth which has stimulated DDGS exports. Tom says those exports have grown from near zero in 2004 to over 6 million tons for 2009 and they’re growing.

You can listen to my interview with Tom here: Tom Dorr Interview
The Export Exchange 2010 is uniquely focused on connecting international buyers of DDGS and coarse grains with the U.S. market. The Council is providing sponsorship for the attendance of targeted international trade teams from more than 25 countries. These participants represent nearly 80 percent of the global export market for DDGS and coarse grains. The conference will address critical issues facing U.S. exports and seek to educate and build awareness of U.S. DDGS and coarse grains among international buyers.

Here are some resource links:

Agenda
Registration
Hotel
Media

Ag Groups, Audio, Ethanol, Grains, International, RFA, USGC

Leica Makes Precision Simple

Chuck Zimmerman

Besides farming, Brent Johnson (pictured right) owns and operates a precison ag company called LABRE Crop Consulting. They are a Leica Geosystems (AgWired sponsor) dealer. Brent talked with me at the Farm Progress Show. He says they try to take a farmer perspective in helping a farmer out.

Brent says that Leica products are unique in that they are not tied to one “color” and work with a variety of networks like the Iowa CORS network which allows them to create sub inch accuracy. The CORS Network is a cellular based correction signal which he describes as a mesh of RTK that blankets the state. He likes Leica products because of their simplicity, especially working with this network.

Brent says that most of his customers know they want some level of precision applications/products and come to him to help create a plan for how they’ll implement a system in their operation. He says they all have different goals and start and end points. His business has grown steadily over the last five years and that he believes there’s a lot of potential for it to grow in the future.

You can listen to my interview with Brent here: Brent Johnson Interview

Agribusiness, Audio, Farm Progress Show, Leica Geosystems, Precision Agriculture

National Cheeseburger Day

Chuck Zimmerman

Don’t forget that tomorrow is National Cheeseburger Day. It’s a time to get that grill going, or oven, or frying pan . . .

Americans celebrate National Cheeseburger Day, September 18, 2010, with classic beef cheeseburgers, a favorite American tradition. As a preferred topping on the burger, 44% choose American cheese, 38% like Cheddar and 23% also say they sometimes put Swiss cheese on their burger, according to a recent survey by IPSOS Public Affairs for The Beef Checkoff.

Ag Groups, Beef, Food

PureSense Irrigation Manager Android App

Chuck Zimmerman

It looks like the Android app market is beginning to see some agricultural applications.

PureSense Environmental Inc. announced today that its Irrigation Manager(TM) Android application is now available through the Android Market.

The PureSense app allows growers to monitor their real-time field conditions and irrigation activity from their Android phones. Monitoring stations placed throughout growers’ fields send data through the internet every fifteen minutes and the PureSense Android application allows the grower to access that information in the field. Using the “offline sync” feature, the data becomes available on the Android phone even when the grower enters an area without cellular signal.

Bryan Alessini, Ranch Manager with F&M Oberti Inc monitors 1500 acres of almond and olive crops with PureSense. Alessini was a beta tester for the Irrigation Manager Android app. Alessini found flexibility a key advantage of the new app. “The new Android app has really given us added flexibility in monitoring not only our field moisture, but also the climate readings our PureSense systems deliver,” said Alessini. “It has been a dependable app and makes it so I don’t have to be near a computer.” PureSense has plans to release additional apps for various platforms in the coming months.

Agribusiness, Internet, Irrigation

Husker Harvest Days

Chuck Zimmerman

Speaking of farm shows. How about Husker Harvest Days? It’s going on now in Grand Island, NE. This is a show I haven’t been to in years but always enjoyed.

Check out their interactive map.

After a delayed start to Day 2 the crowds filled the Husker Harvest Show site west of Grand Island providing exhibitors a strong day. The event, which draws people from more than 40 states, offered plenty of new tech for visitors. The delayed start, caused by high winds overnight ahead of Day 2, are long gone as Day 3 dawns.

A favorable weather forecast will greet visitors traveling to the site today, with highs predicted in the mid-70’s. Day 3 will be a pleasant one for the big show.

From prototype tractors to new-tech irrigation equipment, the show has a wide range of new products for visitors to check out.

Farm Shows

Big Iron Farm & Ranch Shows Draws International Crowd

Chuck Zimmerman

So many farm shows, so little time. I wish we could be at all of them. One of them taking place this week is the Big Iron Farm & Ranch Show in West Fargo, ND. Pictured are a couple of the guys from the Red River Farm Network. The show runs through today and has a significant international attendance.

North Dakota is hosting a large delegation of international guests who are attending the 2010 Big Iron Farm Show and many other events designed to promote exports of North Dakota agricultural equipment and services.

About 110 buyers of farm and ranch equipment and livestock are expected to attend the Big Iron Farm Show’s International Visitors Program Sept. 13-17. The visitors will travel from more than 10 countries, including Russia, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Ukraine, Canada, Uruguay and South Africa to participate in the program.

“The International Visitors Program is a great way of leveraging the draw of the Big Iron Farm Show to build on the growing global demand for North Dakota’s agricultural products,” Gov. John Hoeven said. “This program is one of many strategies we have developed to promote our quality products in high-demand markets around the world.”

Farm Shows

Book Review – The Food Wars

Joanna Schroeder

This week I read a book about the ongoing discussions regarding the causes of the food crisis. It should come as no surprise that several of the main reasons the globe is in the midst of a food crisis, according to a The Food Wars author Walden Bello, are commodity speculation, biofuels, increased demand for food in Asia brought on by prosperity, and most influential, the massive ag policy reorientation known as structural adjustment.

“More central as root causes have been structural adjustment, free trade, and policies extracting surplus from agriculture for industrialization, all of which have destroyed or eroded the agricultural sector of many countries. No one factor can be pinpointed as the cause of the global food crisis. It is the confluence of these conditions that has made the contemporary food price crisis so threatening and difficult to solve,” writes Bello.

One area of focus in The Food Wars, is how US and EU agriculture and agrofuels policies are hurting those very people they are indirectly supposed to be helping. At one point in the book, Bello describes the “capitalism versus the peasant” and details the move to corporate farming – even in the U.S. He cites a statistic about US government subsidies for agriculture, “currently, 38 percent of producers who provide 92 percent of US food receive 87 percent of all farm program payments.”

He then proceeds to explain how the family farm manages to persist among the growing number of corporate farms.

From there, Bello outlines how many corporate players favor the World Trade Organization’s efforts (WTO) to phase out farm programs that subsidize farmers and allow the dumping of US grain abroad. He then notes that, “the United States has steadfastly refused to significantly reduce, much less dismantle, its farm-support programs, which transfer some $40 billion a year to the agricultural sector from consumers, firms and taxpayers.” He says that this stance ultimately equates to free trade for the world and protectionism for the US.

Obviously, Bello explains the above in great detail in the book but ultimately, he segues into the idea that as we enter the world of deglobalization, there may be an opportunity for peasant and small-farmer based agriculture serving local and regional markets to play a starring role in how the production of food is organized and orchestrated.

Bello does a good overall job of trying to address all the factors that contribute to the rise and fall of food prices. In his conclusion, he offers some ways to help people take control of their food security and points again to small farmers or peasant-based farming as a good model to develop local or regional sustainable alternative economies.

Agribusiness, Biofuels, Farm Policy

24th Annual Georgia Peanut Tour

Chuck Zimmerman

The Georgia Peanut Tour got started today. You can get a detailed overview of where they’re going from Amanda Smith, chairman of the Georgia Peanut Tour Committee. Follow along on the blog, Twitter and Facebook.

The 24th Annual Georgia Peanut Tour kicked off this week in Americus, Ga., with a Hot Topics Seminar at the Sumter County Extension Service Office. The Hot Topics Seminar provided updates on the University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (UGA CAES) and included a special focus on harvesting and post harvest storage along with information on the 2010 peanut crop. The tour continues Sept. 15 and 16 in the surrounding area.

Ag Groups, Peanuts, Video

Distillers Grains Export Opportunities

Cindy Zimmerman

Distillers grains exports are climbing to new heights.

Exports of the ethanol co-product distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) hit a new record in July of 886,300 metric tons – which is more than was exported in the entire year in 2004. Total exports this year so far are 4.95 million metric tons, getting close to the total last year of 5.65 million.

Geoff Cooper, VP of Research with the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), says 2005 was really the first year that DDGS exports started to take off. “2005 was the first year that we exported more than one million metric tons and the growth has been very rapid since then,” Cooper said. This year, the U.S. ethanol industry is on pace to export 8.5 million metric tons of DDGS, or about 28% of expected total DDGS production.

One third of the nation’s ethanol production ends up as DDGS, a high quality animal feed which can be used for everything from cattle to fish, and livestock producers in other countries have been quick to see the advantages of feeding the protein rich product to their animals. Cooper says the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), along with other companies and organizations, have been promoting those advantages to help exports grow.

“Education is what’s going to sell your product,” said Cooper. “And we are seeing the fruits of that work in dramatically increased exports.”

Listen to or download my interview with Geoff Cooper here: Geoff Cooper Interview

USGC and RFA are sponsoring a conference to grow the export opportunities for DDGS. The Export Exchange is being held October 6-8 at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel in Chicago, Ill. More information and registration is available on-line here.

Audio, Ethanol, RFA, USGC