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.
Zimfo Bytes
- Four of Southern California’s largest family-owned egg farms have announced the formation of Southern California Egg Cooperative, a new egg marketing cooperative.
- Farm Industry News editor Karen McMahon received the Ruth White Media Award from the Mid American CropLife Association.
- The National Agri-Marketing Association’s next webinar will be Thursday, Sept. 30, at 3:00 central time. Meredith Stevens, digital marketing manager at National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, will be presenting this webinar on social media.
- USDA has released “The Role of Agriculture in Reducint Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”
Corn Farmers Will Reach New Heights
The Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) is focused on reaching out to Iowans and consumers to tell them about the value of Iowa corn farmers. One avenue in which they do this, is through their sponsorship of the Cy-Hawk series and last Saturday, the University of Iowa beat Iowa State in the football game known as the Super Bowl of Iowa. ICGA was there to tell consumers about all of the products that contain corn.
ICGA CEO Craig Floss said that during the game, they were able to get out advertising messages and talk about the importance of Iowa’s corn fed economy and what corn means to the job outlook and picture in Iowa. They were also able to tell the story of how ethanol fits into the picture and what that means for Iowa corn farmers.
A lot of people don’t understand that there is no competition between food, feed, fuel, and fiber. You can find corn in any of these products, said Floss, and he also explained that anything that can be made from petroleum can also be made from corn.
“We hope and we know that the majority of Iowans, 80 plus percent of Iowans, use ethanol every day, which means everywhere they go, they’re using something produced from a corn grower,” said Floss.
The big game happened to fall on 9-11 this year, a day that most of us will never forget. I asked Floss why this day is so important to Iowa’s corn farmers.
“There is no other liquid form of petroleum product like ethanol that can actually replace foreign produced oil. And the bulk of our oil comes from countries that have governments that are not like ours,” said Floss. He continued that everyone was touched by the event and has a connection to the event and we need to find a way to send less money to those countries. That is why we like corn farmers. They’re good for our economy and good for our security.
Floss concluded that corn farmers will continue to exceed the needs of all those products that need corn and that we haven’t seen anything yet.
You can see pictures from game day in the Iowa Corn Fed Game Day photo album.
You can listen to my interview with Craig Floss here. Iowa Corn Farmers Will Reach New Heights
AgChat On Farm Safety
This evening I’ll be moderating the weekly AgChat conversation on Twitter. I hope you’ll tune in and participate. Our topic is farm safety. Next week is National Farm Safety & Health Week so we thought it would be timely, especially with harvest underway in many areas.
I’ve got a number of questions to pose during the session but feel free to email me any you have or DM them directly to the AgChat Twitter Account.
If you can participate I recommend you use a web service like Twubs or TweetChat. You can also just search Twitter for the AgChat hashtag which is #AgChat. Make sure you use it in your tweets from 8-10pm ET this evening. I hope to see you there!
Post Update: We had a great AgChat conversation tonight. Here are the questions. See the transcript on the AgChat Foundation website posted soon.
Q1 How does technology help with operator safety during harvest? via @mpaynknoper
Q2 How do we keep children safe during harvest time? via @ezweber
Q3 What level of training are farmers/ranchers needing for farm safety and compliance with state/fed regs? via @TruffleMedia
Q4 What’s the most dangerous roadway situation you’ve been in while driving/pulling farm equipment? via @AgChick
Q5 What is most likely to get you into trouble when operating farm equipment for any purpose? via @AgriBlogger
Q6 How old do your kids have to be before you let them help with harvest (operate equipment)? via @manningfarm
Q7 What pgms you suggest to involve victim families who want to be proactive helping others prevent or cope? via @bizdrivetime
Q8 Please post/share your links to resources for farm safety information via moderator
Q9 What executable idea will you take away from tonight’s session? via moderator
Valent Launching Three New Products
Valent is preparing to launch three new products including INOVATE, FIERCE and RYZUP according to Dawn Refsell when I spoke with her during the Farm Progress Show.
Inovate is a soybean seed protectant that will help growers maximize soybean stand, vigor and yield. The INOVATE System contains Nipsit INSIDE Insecticide and RANCONA Xxtra Fungicide. The product received registration in January of this year and is already in the field.
Refsell said that so far farmers have been very happy with the product and she explained that they’re getting great results with stand establishment as they’re going out doing stand counts with all the growers. They’ve also seen increases in plant vigor.
A product in the pipeline is FIERCE that will be available for soybeans and no-till corn. Refsell said the use pattern for soybeans is exactly like VALOR, which is a component of FIERCE. She said it can be planted up to 7 days before planting. Valent is expecting registration on the product during 4th Quarter of this year so they are positioning it mainly for Spring.
One last product they are launching is RYZUP, which is a biological. It focuses on grass pastures and it can be applied to extend the grazing season up to 3 weeks. It should be applied when the temperature is between 40-70 degrees because during this time grass is slower to grow.
To learn more about these new Valent products, listen to my interview with Dawn Refsell or visit their website at www.valent.com.Valent Launching Three New Products
Check out our Farm Progress Photo Album.
Corn, Corn Everywhere
The crop report was released last week and the USDA is predicting a record harvest – even after accounting for excessive rain in areas of the Midwest. In Iowa alone, 40 percent of the corn crop goes to ethanol but nationally only 20 percent of the total corn crop goes to ethanol. Also, the livestock industry is the largest consumer of Iowa corn.
I was able to spend some time with the Iowa Corn Growers Association’s (ICGA) new President Dean Taylor last Saturday before the Iowa versus Iowa State football game. My first question for Dean, was in fact, what are we going to do with all this corn? We’re going to produce feed, food, fiber and fuel, he said.
“The fuel, the feed, the fiber, the ethanol….all these things are very important. Especially now that we grow so much corn, we have to remember that what we put into ethanol was never even in the market for feed in the past because we’re just growing that much more corn,” said Taylor.
ICGA along with the Corn Promotion Board joined together to sponsor the Cy-Hawk series – the men’s football, basketball and wrestling matches. I asked Taylor why this sponsorship was so important. He said it’s a great opportunity to showcase all of their products and what they do in Iowa. “It’s contributing to our fuel situation in this country because it’s homegrown instead of imported and that adds to our bottom line. It adds a little bit to our fuel security and the way to look at it, every little bit helps,” said Taylor.
So, what is a product that uses corn that many don’t realize? Bioplastics. When corn is added to bioplastics in replacement of oil, then the plastics become biodegradable. But bioplastics are just one product among thousands that use corn. To learn about the other products, visit www.iacornfed.com.
Well, Iowa won the football game in a landslide but that didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. In conclusion, Taylor said, “Every day is a corn day and every day is a winning day for Iowa corn farmers.”
You can see pictures from game day in the Iowa Corn Fed Game Day photo album.
You can listen to my interview with Dean Taylor here. Corn, Corn Everywhere
I Farm to Feed the World
During the Farm Progress Show, Bayer CropScience kicked off a new initiative called, “I Farm to Feed the World,” in an effort to raise awareness about the need to decrease global hunger amidst a growing population. I spoke with Mark Wrucke about the program and he said, “We’re a global organization and we realize ag has some real challenges coming. The population will continue to grow yet we’re really farming most of the arable land that available right now.”
He continued, “So it’s critically important we maximize our yield and grain quality on every acre we produce. It’s also critically important we maintain the lowest possible footprint in doing so.”
During the show, farmers from around the globe made pledges that they would maximize yields and grain quality while helping to minimize environmental impact. For every pledge, Bayer would donate $5 to one of four local food banks in the area mainly covered by Farm Progress. The pledges raised $6,680 for the food banks.
Knowing the challenges, I asked Wrucke what some of Bayer’s technologies were that would help to solve them. He said, “We’re very proud of the fact we consider ourselves to be the innovation company. We feel the best way to address these challenges in the future is through research.”
Bayer has released 28 new products in the marketplace in the last 10 years and will launch another nine new products by the end of 2012. Wrucke said many of these new products will have a much lower use rate and will be much less toxic to the environment.
To learn more about the “I Farm to Feel the World” initiative as well as to learn about their new products in the pipeline, listen to my interview with Mark Wrucke. You can also visit their website at www.bayercropscience.us.com. I Farm to Feed the World
Check out our Farm Progress Photo Album.
Online Voting: Trees For Troops
Supporting military troops and their families this Christmas is just a few clicks away. Trees for Troops, a program of the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation, makes the holidays a little brighter for military personnel and their families by giving them fresh, full-sized Christmas Trees grown by American farm families.
Trees for Troops is competing with charities nationwide through the Pepsi Refresh Project for a $250,000 grant. Pepsi gives out $1.3 million each month to top vote getters, in amounts ranging from $5,000 up to $250,000. Farmers and ranchers can help support both U.S. military families and U.S. agriculture through this worthwhile national cause.
America’s farm and ranch families can help Trees for Troops deliver an additional 5,000 trees to military families by casting a daily vote in the Pepsi Refresh Project. Click here, then create an account with your name, email and birthday so you can quickly login each day to vote. And, you can also vote from your mobile phone by texting 102662 to Pepsi (73774). Voting is open the entire month of September.
Lady Gaga Gags PETA
Lady Gaga definitely won the prize for most outrageous outfit at the MTV awards on Sunday night with an all-meat ensemble complete with hat, shoes and purse that people are still talking about. The sound of Hollywood vegans and vegetarians gagging was music to the ears when she walked up on stage in the outfit to accept the award for Best Video of the Year from Cher, who had to hold Gaga’s meat purse.
It had to have grossed out MTV host and dedicated vegan Ellen DeGeneres, who interviewed Lady Gaga about the stunt and why she did it. Her reasoning was not entirely clear, but supposedly had something to do with homosexual rights. “Well, it is certainly no disrespect to anyone that is vegan or vegetarian. As you know, I am the most judgment-free human being on the earth,” said Gaga. “However, it has many interpretations but for me this evening. If we don’t stand up for what we believe in and if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our own bones. And, I am not a piece of meat.”
Of course, it offended PETA, which thinks that Lady Gaga is “over the top.” This from an organization that is all about being over the top when it comes to drawing attention to itself. They decided that the dress must “smell like the rotting flesh it is and likely be crawling in maggots.”
MTV was kind enough to give us all the details about the dress from the designer Franc Fernandez, grilling him with such burning questions as “Did it smell? Was it bloody? Was it heavy? Was Lady Gaga comfortable?”
The cut of meat he used was what he called “matambre” – which is basically flank steak in Argentina, although it is said to translate literally as “shoe leather.” He used 50 pounds of the meat to make the entire ensemble, with very little leftover. According to Fernandez, Lady Gaga said the meat smelled “sweet” and the dress was heavy but comfortable. And he says it was not bloody at all to work with or wear. “It’s actually very clean meat, very sturdy and strong and doesn’t run at all. It’s the meat you use to make a roast, where you roll it in a tortilla and put it in the oven. Hence, the shoes — that’s why they were wrapped in butcher twine.”
Interestingly, most of the so-called “polls” on websites like the Huffington Post about the outfit were pretty evenly split over whether it was offensive or awesome. Miss Gaga also recently wore a meat bikini on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan. Maybe the meat industry should start a new clothing line.
IFAJ Congress 2011
Mark your calendars now for the IFAJ Congress 2011.
In 2011, we’re inviting you to come and experience New World agriculture for yourself. Be there as the world’s leading agricultural journalists assemble for the first IFAJ congress in Canada in more than 40 years.
* Experience agriculture in the Great Lakes region – one of the most fertile and productive farming regions on Earth
* Learn how immigrant farmers – many from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany – have found prosperity in Canada
* See research-driven innovations and cutting-edge agricultural practices and theories in action
* Enhance your journalism and communication skills and get access to opinion leaders and decision makers at professional development sessions