Do you know what this image means? If not, you’re not alone. Let’s just say it has to do with Boehringer Ingelheim and pigs.
We’ll find out more this weekend when I attend the BIVI Swine Health Seminar in St. Paul, MN. It’s going to take place on Saturday afternoon. We’ll find out together online.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Here’s a call out for support of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Foundation. You can donate an item to the annual auction at the NAFB Convention or just send cash!
Generous donations in past years have helped provide financial support and educational opportunities for young people in pursuit of careers in agricultural communications. Each year, six college students – three scholarship recipients and three station and network interns – directly benefit from your kindness and care for the future of the industry.
In addition to this important work of supporting these future agricultural communicators, the Foundation Board is also currently working on new ways to supply funding for stations and networks who would like to increase their voice for advocacy of agriculture.
Please fill out and submit the contribution form found here (pdf) at your earliest convenience to contribute to this great cause and wonderful event. If you have any questions, please contact the NAFB office at 816.431.4032 or send an email to jennifer@nafb.com.
If you can’t take policy makers to the field then take the field to the policy makers.
On Thursday, September 23rd and Friday, September 24th a live wheat field, approximately one quarter of an acre in size, will sprout from the streets of the nation’s capital in an effort to promote food literacy via farm-to-fork wheat education. The North Dakota Wheat Commission along with fellow members of the nation’s wheat industry will unite to deliver an authentic experience to city dwellers and key influencers during the Wheat Foods Council’s second Urban Wheat Field. The event will take place on Maryland Avenue between 3rd and 4th streets.
Coming off the success and excitement of New York’s Urban Wheat Field in 2008, the Wheat Foods Council is looking forward to strengthening their message and enhancing the experience at the Washington, D.C. event.
Experts in the areas of wheat agriculture, milling, baking and nutrition will guide visitors through each phase of the grain’s life cycle, engaging them in hands-on activities and demonstrations along the way. “This is a great opportunity to reach the urban population who may not be familiar with the agriculture industry or completely understand where their food comes from. They will be able to see the farm-to-fork process firsthand,” said Erica Olson, North Dakota Wheat Commission marketing specialist. The wheat on display is a hard red spring wheat variety grown in the Northern Plains.
Preceding the event, the National Association of Wheat Growers will host a reception for congressional staff members to experience the event and meet with representatives from their individual state wheat commissions.
There are so many reasons to support American energy independence it sometimes amazes me how many special interest groups or ill informed people oppose it. Sure, we work with groups like the Renewable Fuels Association but we’d support the industry and ethanol anyway. It’s good to see that RFA will make sure lawmakers keep ethanol in mind when they get back to work.
As Congress returns to work for the final weeks before the fall elections, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) will greet them with a television ad on MSNBC’s Morning Joe news program. “Right Here, Right Now” is an updated ad that highlights the innovative, job-creating engine that is the American ethanol industry. This ad reminds viewers that the answer to a cleaner environment and reducing our dependence on foreign oil is available “Right Here, Right Now”.
The thirty second ad will air on Morning Joe between September 15th and October 12th in the Washington, DC media market. Nine spots per week. Morning Joe is a show viewed heavily by policy makers and influentials on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and all points in between. Morning Joe airs from 5am – 9am Eastern.
I worked along side him at Farm Progress Show and did not know I was in the presence of greatness.
Roger Ward, Farm Director of WLDS 1180AM in Jacksonville, was named the 2010 Service to Agriculture Award recipient at the Illinois State Fair Agriculture Day Luncheon on August 17. The award is sponsored by Farm Credit Services of Illinois and recognizes individuals with extraordinary career contributions to the agriculture industry. Roger has been a part of WLDS Farm Broadcasting for more than 25 years. He joined the WLDS team in 1983 and became the full time Farm Director in 2001.
In the photo from left to right: Orion Samuelson, WGN Radio/RFD TV; Haley Freeman, Miss Illinois County Fair 2010; Roger and Cathy Ward; Mike Loyd, Farm Credit Services of Illinois; and Tom Jennings, Illinois Department of Agriculture Director.
