Tomorrow morning I’ll be attending the Biodiversity World Tour stop in Ames, IA where our U.S. Secretary of Ag, Tom Vilsack, will be joining the conversation. The event will be streamed live online too. Just use the hashtag #BWT2010 and your tweets will appear in the auditorium for the audience, moderator, Secretary Vilsack, and panelists to see.
Iowa State University, CropLife International, CropLife America, and Truth about Trade and Technology have partnered together to bring together farmers from around the world to discuss what they are doing on a daily basis to preserve our planet and how they see these practices improving in the future. Featuring farmers from North America, Asia, and South America, the panel will discuss the role of sustainable agriculture practices in protecting biodiversity. In addition, taking questions from the audience and interacting with the panel will also be United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
This event is on the agenda of the Truth About Trade and Technology, Global Farmer To Farmer Roundtable, which I’m participating in courtesy of the National Corn Growers Association, one of the event’s sponsors.
Believing that farmers must work together on a global table to expand access to technology in agriculture to all, Truth About Trade & Technology (TATT) – an American based non-profit formed and led by farmers who support access to technology, including biotechnology, and freer trade – will host an Annual Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable.
So, keep an eye on AgWired for action from these events. They kind of tie into the Borlaug Dialogues and World Food Prize Symposium that take place in Des Moines this week too. I am not planning on attending them, but who knows? Schedules can change.
Charleston|Orwig Gets Social At World Dairy Expo
Let’s meet the President of Charleston|Orwig, Mark Gale. In this week’s program you’ll hear a conversation that Cindy had with Mark at the recent World Dairy Expo. Charleston|Orwig, along with several of their clients were sponsors of our coverage of the annual dairy extravaganza once again.
Mark told Cindy that the agency business has made some dramatic changes in the past few years with the advent of social media and he is proud that Charleston|Orwig has been on the forefront of using these new tools to communicate.
Mark is also one of the founding members of the AgChat Foundation, which is dedicated to helping farmers and ranchers use social media platforms to connect with each other and advocate for agriculture.
So please enjoy this week’s program: ZimmCast 276 - Interview with Mark Gale
This week’s program ends with some fun music from Music Alley. It’s a song titled, “Chocolate Milk” by The Two Man Gentlemen Band. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.
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
It’s Green, It’s Bumpy, It’s…
Not a pickle. It’s a hedgeapple. We used to (incorrectly) call them hedge balls, and one year, I even used it for an elementary pumpkin-decorating contest and took first place. Maybe there is a creative bone in me somewhere.
Here are a few little-known facts about the Hedge tree: The hedge tree has several names, Osage Orange (most popular) and Bodark (French) and Maclura pomifera (scientific name). Not all of the Osage Orange trees will have fruit because hedge trees are either male or female. Osage Orange is a cousin to the mulberry tree.
The Osage Orange was one of the primary trees used in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Great Plains Shelterbelt” WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states, and by 1942 resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for 18,600 miles. The sharp-thorned trees were also planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire and afterward became an important source of fence posts. (Source: Wikipedia)
Today, the fruit is sometimes used to deter spiders, cockroaches, boxelder bugs, crickets and fleas. One of the guys working on our house told me to put it in my closet to keep away the bugs. I think I’ll toss it back along the side of the road where I found it, or maybe stick it in amongst the mix of pumpkins and gourds that decorate my kitchen island. I guess Osage Orange trees are most common in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, but I know this for a fact – someone must have transplanted a whole lot of them to southeast Nebraska because they’re everywhere. Gives kids something fun to find for a scavenger hunt.
Until we walk again…
Zimfo Bytes
- The 2010 Annual Meeting of the ASFMRA will be held Nov. 1-4 in Orlando Florida under the theme, ’81 Years of Magic’.
- American Farmland Trust has launched “Dine out for Farms” – a national, weeklong event (Oct. 10-16) that will bring together restaurants and consumers together across the country to support a sustainable future for America’s farms.
- Bunge North America announced the opening of the Bunge Ingredient Innovation Center for Edible Oils & Carbohydrates in Bradley, Ill.
- Kincannon & Reed announced the promotion of Jon Leafstedt to Managing Partner.
Reaction to USDA Crop Forecast
Both corn and soybean production for this year were cut in this month’s crop report out this morning from USDA. Corn production is forecast at 12.7 billion bushels, down 4 percent from the September forecast and down 3 percent from last year’s record production of 13.1 billion bushels. Soybean production is forecast at a record high 3.41 billion bushels, down 2 percent from September but 1 percent above last year.
The industry was expecting the corn forecast to be lowered, but it was the amount of the decrease that caught the industry by surprise, according to John Anderson, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.
“This is a pretty sizable drop in production,” Anderson said. “We saw a really big drop in USDA’s forecasted average yield for corn because of adverse weather in the big corn states of Illinois, Iowa and Indiana. USDA is forecasting a national average yield of 155.8 bushels per acre, compared to 162.5 bushels per acre in September’s report. A 6.7 bushel drop in yield is pretty significant.”
On the Minneapolis Grain Exchange monthly conference call featuring commentary on the USDA report, Peter Georgantones from ITS also expressed surprise at the new forecast, predicting it will lead to $6.00/bu corn, “pretty easily now.” Market reaction was definitely higher on Friday with December corn closing up 30 cents at $5.28 a bushel, the highest in over two years.
The latest supply-demand numbers reflecting the new forecast show a decrease in stocks, increase in feed use, decrease in exports and ethanol about the same. At a seminar in Chicago promoting exports of the ethanol by-product distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS), U.S. Grains Council President and CEO Tom Dorr was not too concerned about the report. “I’ve been a farmer most of my life and the thing that I know is that farmers more often than not, swim in surpluses, they love dealing with shortfalls and they’ll produce our way out of this very quickly,” Dorr said.
Increased use of corn for ethanol has created more than 30 million metric tons of DDGS, a high-value feed product for domestic and international livestock producers. Initial 2010 export projections of 6.2 million tons of DDGS will be surpassed this calendar year as the United States gears up to export approximately 8 million tons.
Listen to or download an interview that Chuck did with Dorr reacting to the report today: Tom Dorr Interview
Farm Policy Outlook For 2011
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with one of the presenters produced by Paulsen Marketing.
The 2010 Trends in Agriculture conference wrapped up with a Washington update: what to expect in 2011. Jim Wiesemeyer, senior vice president of policy and trade issues for Informa Economics Inc.’s Washington office, says the next few years could be the beginning of a golden era for agriculture.
Engaging Agricultural Communities
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with one of the presenters produced by Paulsen Marketing.
How do agrimarketing firms find and engage agriculture communities and consumers? Joseph Rueter, a partner in Curation Station in Minneapolis, shared his insights with the Trends in Agriculture conference.
Macro Food Trends
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with panel participants produced by Paulsen Marketing.
The second day of NAMA’s Trends in Agriculture kicked off with a panel discussion on “Macro Food Trends.”
Dan Halstrom is the Senior Vice President of marketing and communication for the U.S. Meat Export Federation. He emphasized a focus on global trade is essential.
Carol Bagnoli heads the Consumer Insights Strategy group at General Mills. She said consumers are focusing on health issues, especially where their food comes from.
Rose Mitchell is the Senior Vice President of Governmental Relations for Hy-Vee. She sees tremendous growth in organic products.
Jim Compart is President of Compart Family Farms and also the President of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association. He sees over-regulation as a barrier to producers export opportunities.
Zimfo Bytes
- During the month of September, as part of Hunger Action Month, 55 food banks in 24 states received monetary donations on behalf of Weeding out Hunger, a hunger-relief campaign based on grower purchases of Halex GT corn herbicide.
- The National Corn Growers Association announced that Kyle Fergason has been promoted to National Corn Yield Contest Manager and will handle the day-to-day operation of this popular program.
- Mycogen Seeds has launched a redesigned website to help growers make well-informed decisions about their MYCOGEN brand seed purchases. The focus of the website is “Localized Products, Performance and People.”
- Aquarium Digital Engagement, the interactive division of McCormick Company, welcomes two new staff members to its Des Moines-area office. Digital strategist Dylan Hamilton and digital designer Matt Smith recently joined the company.
Dr. Jay Lehr Discusses Communicating Ag’s Story To Consumers
Straight from the NAMA Trends in Agriculture conference is a video with one of the presenters produced by Paulsen Marketing.
Dr. Jay Lehr capped off the first day of NAMA’s Trends in Agriculture in Minneapolis. Dr. Lehr, an economist and futurist, talked about the challenges agrimarketers have in communicating agriculture’s story to consumers.