Camelina Gaining Favor with Farmers for Biodiesel

Joanna Schroeder

Farmers in several regions of the U.S. are discovering a new potential cash crop – camelina. Camelina is beginning to find favor with both the biofuels industry as a strong potential feedstock for biodiesel, as well as with farmers who are discovering they will be able to grow the crop profitably.

One such farmer is Steve Camp, whose farm is located in Lacrosse, Washington. He is working with researchers from Washington State University (WSU) to test the viability of camelina for biodiesel. This program is one element of a recent initiative known as the “Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest” project, a large scale effort to create biodiesel for use in aviation applications. Camp was featured in an article focusing on WSU’s research.

Camp began growing the crop in 2007 after visiting an oilseed rep who was encouraging farmers to test the crop. Last year, he crushed the camelina commercially and used it to run his tractor and pick-up. This past winter, he also pressed some of the camelina using a press from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the result is waiting in storage to be converted to fuel.

Camp’s initial outlook is sunny on crop. “I feel good about the possibilities for camelina,” he said. “I am excited about this endeavor. I really see potential. I’ve got enough experience now to know that it does work.”Read More

Biodiesel, Farming, Video

Register for Export Exchange

Cindy Zimmerman

Registration is now open for the Export Exchange 2010, an international trade conference focused around the export of U.S. coarse grains and the ethanol co-product distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS).

usgcThe event is co-sponsored by the Renewable Fuels Association and the U.S. Grains Council and will bring together more than 150 international buyers of U.S. DDGS and coarse grains with more than 300 U.S. producers and agribusinesses. “We are excited to have the Renewable Fuels Association co-sponsor the Export Exchange 2010,” said USGC President and CEO Thomas C. Dorr. “The burgeoning world population is demanding more meat, milk and eggs. U.S. DDGS and coarse grains continue to play an important role in livestock and poultry feed rations globally. We have to educate and connect our buyers and sellers to continue to grow vital markets for the United States.”

The conference will be held on Oct. 6-8, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel in Chicago, Ill. Registration information is available here.

Ethanol, Grains, RFA, USGC

Busy BASF

Cindy Zimmerman

Playing catch-up here on news from the past week out of BASF Crop Protection

basfFirst, the company recently released “Top Plots: Episode 2” starring award-winning corn and soybean farmer Gary Porter of Mercer, Missouri. In the video, Porter shares how he began farming with his father in the 1970’s in an area not known for deep fertile crop ground – the far northern part of Missouri. Despite facing challenging land every year, Porter consistently ranks high in the National Corn Grower Association (NCGA) National Corn Yield Contest and won the competition in both 1994 and 2003.

Also, BASF is in the final stages of defining Initium® fungicide, a new active ingredient designed to protect a wide array of specialty crops and ornamentals from disease. Research on Zampro™ fungicide—a new multi-mode preventative fungicide for specialty crops, and Orvego™ fungicide—a formulation specifically for the greenhouse and nursery markets was presented at the recent American Phytopathological Society (APS) in Charlotte, NC. EPA registrations for the products are expected in 2012.

basfLast, but certainly not least at all – BASF is proud to announce that Kixor® herbicide technology was the largest new herbicide product launch in two decades, applied to more than 10 million acres in first year. Launched almost a year ago in September 2009, the Kixor chemistry powers a family of four products – Sharpen™ herbicide, OpTill™ herbicide, Integrity™ herbicide and Treevix™ herbicide. Mike Hofer, Kixor Marketing Manager, says the new herbicide chemistry has been successful in part because it addresses two of the most common challenges faced by growers – managing input costs and protecting yields – by controlling broadleaf weeds quickly and providing residual activity on tough broadleaf weeds.

There you go – all caught up on the latest BASF news!

BASF

No-till Cotton Provides Conservation Opportunity

Chuck Zimmerman

Jon BlackDuring the Conservation in Action Tour one of our farm stops was the Carter Farm where we met Jon Black (pictured left). He gave us a presentation on no-till cotton which he is standing in. I caught up to him on the phone afterward since we didn’t have time for an interview there.

Jon says continuous no-till farming is the main conservation practices he employs on his farm. He says most of the land on his farm hasn’t been worked up in over 15 years. He says this helps keep a cover crop or mulch cover on the ground all the time which controls runoff and keeps the nutrients intact. He says yields for corn and cotton have been good using this no-till method except when they follow corn with wheat but a lot has to do with the weather. Imagine that! He has employed nutrient products from AGROTAIN although he tries not to apply more nitrogen than the crop will take. He says these products become more important if there has been a lot of rain or heat. In the case of heat he says you worry about volatility and AGROTAIN products help with that.

Jon Black Interview

Conservation In Action Tour 2010 Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the Conservation In Action Tour is made
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Ag Groups, Audio, Conservation, CTIC, Farming

Farm Podcaster Tool

Chuck Zimmerman

With a name like Olympus LS-11PKG it must be a good gadget for the Farm Podcaster. I haven’t tried one but they’re on special now at BSW.

The Olympus LS-11 handheld PCM recorder features two high-sensitivity microphones and 8GB of internal memory as well as up to 24-bit/96kHz linear PCM recording in multiple formats for better than CD audio quality.

In addition to its 8 GB of internal memory, the LS-11 has the capacity for another 32 GB of memory utilizing SD or SDHC cards. It also offers up to 32 hours of battery life.

With the LS-11 you can do stereo or mono recording in WAV, MP3 or WMA formats, fine tune your recording with an LCD-displayed level meter, edit the audio files, or use an auto-record function that activates (and shuts off) the LS-11 at pre-set levels. It also boasts two built-in reference speakers for handy stereo monitoring.

And you can plug in an external mic or other audio source.

Equipment, Podcasts

There Is Truth In Food

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast 269When it comes to food we all need a little bit of truth. Well, maybe a lot of truth. So TruthInFood.com sounds like a good idea. To learn more about this intriguing project I spoke with Mike Smith, Food Chain Communications.

Mike and I had a great conversation about understanding why people from both production agriculture and the urban consuming public think the things they do. To effectively communicate you need to understand your audience and not just preach at them. Sounds easy, eh? Not really. However, Mike and Kevin Murphy set out a year ago to create an online location to post thought provoking stories about the Truth In Food.

Truth in Food traverses the entire food chain, traveling the long and winding road from conception to consumption armed with the farmer’s natural skepticism and the scholar’s thirst for knowledge, the mechanic’s understanding of nuts and bolts and the philosopher’s impulse toward the sublime, all blended with insight, scholarship, thought and good old fashioned humor.

The most popular story they’ve posted so far is “The Ten Reasons They Hate You So.” I encourage you to read it. So let’s learn more about TruthInFood.com and what Mike has learned during this past year. ZimmCast 269

The program ends this week with Truth of the Matter by Drew Vics from Music Alley.

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

Agencies, Audio, Food, ZimmCast

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

Zimfo Bytes

Novus in the Beef Market

Cindy Zimmerman

novus international mechanical cowWhile there is no big trade show at the Cattle Industry summer conference, the major animal health partners in the beef and dairy industry still have a presence, and one of the newer players there was Novus International. Novus introduced itself to the beef industry during the Cattle Industry Conference in January, with the help of a mechanical steer named Wally that was on display at their booth.

scott fleetwoodNovus Executive Director for Global Markets and Products Scott Fleetwood says the company’s products were originally focused in the poultry industry, but since 2004 they have expanded into other markets. “Including aquaculture, dairy, swine, and this year we acquired a company called Albion to expand our footprint and move into the beef market, because it obviously has similar needs,” said Scott during an interview at the summer conference. “We focus on gut health, nutrition, feed quality, all of those are common, so it was a natural fit for us.”

Most of Novus’ products are feed additives, like chelated minerals and amino acids, that help improve the overall efficiency of animals. “The goal is to get to one kilogram of grain in to one kilogram of meat or milk or egg out,” said Scott, noting that efficiency not only increases productivity, it also is key to sustainability. “Something that is very important to the beef industry is the sustainability aspect of it and the utilization of resources and there is a lot of misconceptions in the general population,” he said.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Scott from the summer meeting here: Scott Fleetwood Interview

Animal Health, Audio, Beef, Novus International

Public Relations Etiquette

Chuck Zimmerman

When I bring up PR etiquette in a conversation it usually generates a few chuckles. Now why would that be? Maybe I should refer to this as public relations professionalism. Whatever you want to call it the recent Ag Media Summit provided several opportunities to comment on it. During the event’s InfoExpo I had two situations that provide a real good lesson in what “not to do.”

The first one involved me walking to a scheduled appointment with an exhibitor to conduct an interview. While walking past a certain exhibit one of the people in the booth grabbed me by the arm, stopping me and “asking” if I could interview their representative who was at that moment already being interviewed. I explained that I had a scheduled interview and could come back later. My arm was still being held and further pressure was applied verbally to stay. I don’t know about you but even though I like a good welcoming hug, I’m not fond of being grabbed. Needless to say I did not return to this booth.

Another situation involved me in conversation with my scheduled appointment and prior to starting me interview (audio recording), a PR professional from another booth walked in between me and the person I was speaking with and proceeded to try to start a conversation as if I wasn’t there. I had to speak over the shoulder to my contact and say that perhaps we could finish if this was more important. Turns out it wasn’t and they were told to come back. Needless to say I did not visit their booth. Read More

Public Relations

Social Networking and Blogs #1 Online Activity

Chuck Zimmerman

This is no surprise to ZimmComm New Media but it may surprise many agrimarketers. According to a post on Nielsen Wire titled, “What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity,” social networks and blog dominate people’s web use.

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

Up 43 percent! That’s huge. The company also released a report that says seventy percent of people worldwide now watch video online!

Social Networking