RFA Ethanol Podcast

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • McGill University and Becker Underwood have signed a commercial licensing agreement granting Becker Underwood exclusive rights to patented nitrogen-fixing technology developed by a team of McGill researchers.
  • A new report by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) shows direct-to-consumer farm marketing in the United States is growing faster than total agricultural sales—the two categories increased 104.7 percent and 47.6 percent, respectively, from 1997 to 2007.
  • Designed to help growers in California find crop solutions specifically approved by the state regulatory agencies, farmers can now learn more about the Stoller technology and products available in their area.
  • Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin Youth Leadership Derby will be held at the Milton High School – Milton, Wisc., Nov. 7-8, 2009.
Zimfo Bytes

Tractor Racing in Nashville at Fan Fair

Chuck Zimmerman

2009 CMA Music FestAgWired goes country this week at the 2009 Country Music Association’s annual summer Music Fest, commonly known as Fan Fair. Once again we’re sponsored by New Holland to cover their activities which culminate on Sunday with the Michael Peterson/New Holland Celebrity Tractor Race. You’ll be able to watch live video of the race, announced by AgriTalk’s Mike Adams, here via AgWired Live TV starting at 10:30am this Sunday.

It looks like the competition for the race is already heating up as evidenced by this excerpt from the latest National Biodiesel Board news release:

National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe returns for his third appearance in the New Holland Celebrity Tractor Race, now in its fourth year as a popular feature of the Country Music Association’s (CMA) 2009 Music Festival, June 10-14, 2009 in Nashville, TN. The race involves “celebrities” from many professions driving a New Holland compact tractor through an obstacle course of road cones, each trying to complete the course in the least amount of seconds.

Jobe, who placed 3rd in the 2008 race, has his eyes set on moving higher in the ratings. One of his main challengers from 2008 is his friend and biodiesel supporter Chuck Leavell, environmentalist, conservationist, author, and 27-year keyboardist for the Rolling Stones. Leavell placed 5th in 2008, but only seconds on the clock separated the two friends. His eyes are also set on placing higher. Adding to the action is country music artist Michael Peterson, also a strong biodiesel supporter, who is hosting the competition for New Holland.

“New Holland is once again taking an industry-leading role in its support of biodiesel,” said Jobe. “They have already led the industry in supporting 100% biodiesel in all of the engines they manufacture, but they are not resting on those achievements. They continue to promote the biodiesel for its benefits to the nation’s energy supply, food supply, and agricultural sector.”

Cindy, Carly and I will all be on location starting this evening so you can count on lots of photos, interviews and videos this week from the home of country music.

Biodiesel, New Holland

Novus International Partners With Chr. Hansen

Cindy Zimmerman

novusNOVUS International signed an agreement last week at World Pork Expo with Chr. Hansen to provide the direct fed microbial BioPlus 2B® for swine producers in the United States.

chr hansenBioPlus 2B® contains two strains of Bacillus (Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis). These Bacillus strains can improve the intestinal microbial balance of swine. Safety studies have proven that BioPlus 2B® strains are totally safe to animals and humans. The data was compiled into more than 5,000 pages to get final approval in the European Union for all swine categories. It makes BioPlus 2B® the most extensively documented microbial for swine.

Dan Meagher“This partnership compliments our GEMS nutrition program and gut health management portfolio,” stated Dan Meagher, Vice President, Americas. “NOVUS International is focused on providing producers, nutritionists and veterinarians with ways to optimize pig health and performance.”

BioPlus 2B® is an effective means of helping balance bacterial populations in the intestinal tract to improve performance regardless of life stage. BioPlus 2B® is an effective DFM that increases live weight gain and improves feed conversion efficiency when used in nursery and grow-finish applications. BioPlus 2B® also helps improve overall intestinal health, improved average daily gain (ADG) and decreased mortality.

“The cooperation with NOVUS International immediately broadens our access to the swine market in the United States. We expect strong growth in sales with this cooperation”, explains Dr. Bill Braman, VP Marketing and Sales Animal Health & Nutrition, Chr. Hansen NA.

I interviewed Dan Meagher (pronounced like mayor) at WPX last week and he talked about the deal with Chr. Hansen.

Listen to my interview with Dan here: wpx09-novus-dan.mp3

You can also download Dan’s interview here: Dan Meagher (mp3)

Audio, Novus International, Pork, Swine, World Pork Expo

Farm Bureau Social Media Perspective

Chuck Zimmerman

American Farm Bureau Council of PresidentsThe American Farm Bureau Federation is having its annual Council of Presidents meeting in Boston, MA and I’m on location to do a presentation about social media this afternoon. During the lunch break I spoke with AFBF President, Bob Stallman, to get his perspective on the use of social media for an organization like his.

Bob says, “We’ve always been involved in the public domain. We’ve always tried to make our case to citizens and the public. Communications mechanisms have changed. It’s become very evident that this new concept and implementation of social media is going to influence people and that’s our goal, to influence people so we have to be involved. Now it does involve changing a lot of old mindset but it’s clear that we have to be engaged.” In my interview with Bob I also got an update on their current priorities which include regulation and in particular those surrounding the climate.

You can listen to my interview with Bob here: afbf-stallman-6-8-09.mp3

Earlier today I solicited some comments from the Twitterverse with the request, “If anybody has anything they’d like #AFBF Council of Presidents to know today please use the hashtag in your tweet. Thanks.” Thank you to everyone who has already posted a comment. You can find them by searching the #AFBF hashtag. Here are a few of them:

skinnyhorse: @AgriBlogger I found it helpful to follow people like lobbyists at the State Cap. for breaking news on legislation, amendments etc. #AFBF

RayLinDairy: .@AgriBlogger #AFBF Time to join SM was yesterday don’t waste anymore time thinking about it.

AFBFMace: @AgriBlogger #AFBF Farm Bureau and ag are well represented in SM and we are growing the army every day. Sevrl state FBs are taking the lead

mpaynknoper: My comments for #AFBF are on FB – it’s critical more in #ag engage. Some producers prefer SM to give #farm facts vs. speaking to groups.

whitwallace: @AgriBlogger SM is influencing perceptions as we speak. When we aren’t part of the convo, our story is told for us, minus the facts. #AFBF

This request and response from a widespread audience is a perfect example of the power of a social media channel like Twitter. Literally within moments of my posting that request, responses were coming in and as I post this I’m seeing more pop up so please feel free to see how today’s Twitter “chat” turns out.

Ag Groups, Audio

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

Zimfo Bytes

AgWired RSS Trick

Chuck Zimmerman

RSS FeedAlthough we have many people subscribing to the AgWired rss feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Agwired) what happens if you don’t want all our news? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just subscribe to the content you’re most interested in?

Well you can. Here’s how:

Let’s say you work for an advertising agency and would just like to subscribe to news we give the Agency category to. That’s easy to find using our drop down menu of Categories which you’ll find in the left sidebar. The Agency category is this: http://agwired.com/category/agency/.

So to make that into a news feed (rss) that your news reader of choice will recognize, just add the word feed to the end of the url. There you go. A custom rss feed of all our agency categorized news. The url now looks like this: http://agwired.com/category/agency/feed.

This works for any of our categories and we’ve got 177 to choose from! So perhaps you’d like to just subscribe to news posts for John Deere, just add the word “feed” to that category url and here’s the url you use to subscribe with: http://agwired.com/category/john-deere/feed

Make sense? Easy isn’t it?

Let me add one more little item of trickery for you. Since you know we post so much audio and you may or may not want to listen to it on your computer how about if you create a podcast of our audio. Yes, you heard me right. Do the same thing I described above but use iTunes or some other podcatching software to subscribe. It will only search and pull from posts that have audio posted in them and by category or from our main rss feed, your choice. Try it. Then your iTunes will pull the audio into your computer and you can sync it to your iPod to listen to when and where you want.

Let me know if you have any problems. So for those of you who still aren’t using a news reader or subscribing to and listening to podcasts, here’s a few suggested links for you:

News Reader Software:

NewsGator – Has a web, PC, Mac and iPhone version and they all sync with each other. My favorite.
Internet Explorer – Yes your browser will do this for you. Here’s a How-To.
Firefox – Same goes for this browser.
Google Reader
Most email programs do this now to.

Podcast software:

iTunes – The best in my opinion and for either Mac or PC. Here’s a How-To.

Uncategorized

Hog Industry Outlook at WPX

Cindy Zimmerman

Glenn GrimesA media event at World Pork Expo sponsored by Fort Dodge Animal Health gave the outlook in several different areas for hog producers – the market, H1N1 and control of Porcine Circovirus Type 2 (PCV2).

It goes without saying that the market outlook is pretty dismal. University of Missouri professor emeritus Glenn Grimes summarized his forecast simply. “Farrows trending down, continued productivity growth, fewer imports of Canadian hogs and pigs, decrease in pork exports, weak domestic demand, high feed costs, red ink for producers – and the bottom line is we have to reduce the herd five percent minimum and maybe ten.”

Download or listen to some of Dr. Grimes remarks here: Glenn Grimes

Greg StevensonDr. Greg Stevenson with the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory discussed swine influenza testing and USDA surveillance for swine flu. It was a pretty technical presentation that detailed the genetic difference between the H1N1 virus in humans and in swine. “When the USDA is going to be talking about surveillance, they’re going to be calling it H1N1 Flu Outbreak Virus (FOV), trying to distinguish it from the H1N1 that is in the swine population now in the U.S.,” said Dr. Stevenson. “We’ve got to talk about it intelligently and we’ve got to be careful to distinguish the two for the sake of the swine industry.” To talk intelligently about it, he says we’re all going to have to become virologists, and he proceeded to give a crash course in virology in 25 minutes. Learn more here. wpx09-stevenson.mp3

Joe ConnorOn the PCV2 control front, there is some good news for producers. Dr. Joe Connor, president of Carthage Veterinary Service, gave an update on PCV2 vaccines. Specifically, he talked about the efficacy of Suvaxyn PCV2 One Dose from Fort Dodge Animal Health. “We’ve had very high success with the vaccines in all the studies,” he reported. “We’ve shown in all of the studies that we are comfortable vaccinating with singe dose vaccines such as Suvaxyn at 3 or 5 weeks of age.” The studies done in commercial herds in the United States, Europe, Japan and New Zealand all indicated that Suvaxyn significantly reduced total mortality rate and improved growth performance. Nice to hear some positive news for pork producers!

Listen to Dr. Connor’s summary here. wpx09-connor.mp3 Download here: Joe Connor


World Pork Expo 09 Photo Album

Audio, Pork, Swine, Veterinary, World Pork Expo

Impact of H1N1 at WPX

Cindy Zimmerman

hand washingAttendance was down a bit at World Pork Expo this year due primarily to the impact of the H1N1 virus or “swine flu,” which kept away many international visitors who would normally attend. Washing and sanitizing of hands was stressed more than normal and the flu was a topic of press conferences, media interviews and general conversation.

Jorge GonzalezAs we all know, the “epidemic” started in Mexico, and I talked with Jorge Gonzalez, Novus International sales manager for northern Latin America, about the impact it has had on the pork industry in Mexico. “The name of the virus, swine flu, affected the consumption in Mexico,” Jorge said. “Consumption decreased 30 percent so the pork producers are in a very bad situation.” Like the U.S., Mexico has also been impacted by restrictions on pork imports from North America imposed by China and Russia.

However, Jorge says the industry remains optimistic about the future and they hope that within the next two months consumption will be back up to normal levels.

Listen or download Jorge’s interview here. Jorge Gonzalez


World Pork Expo 09 Photo Album

AgWired coverage of World Pork Expo made possible by Novus International and Boehringer Ingelheim
Novus boehringer-ingelheim

Audio, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novus International, Pork, Swine, World Pork Expo

Pig Racing at WPX

Cindy Zimmerman

WPX Pig RaceSeriously, what would a pork expo be without racing pigs? While World Pork Expo is a serious event for producers who want to find out the latest information about their industry, it’s also a family event with fun stuff like pig races.

Hendrick’s Racing Pigs provides the entertainment in the cattle barn on the Iowa State Fairgrounds. The races are short – only about a minute – but the fun part is the Pig Lady’s commentary as she introduces the little critters who are named with various themes. Here is a video of the “Redneck Racers” – which included Jeff Hogsworthy, Bill Spamball, Ham Salad, and Larry the Bacon Guy.


World Pork Expo 09 Photo Album

AgWired coverage of World Pork Expo made possible by Novus International and Boehringer Ingelheim
Novus boehringer-ingelheim

Boehringer Ingelheim, Novus International, Pork, Swine, Video, World Pork Expo

Boehringer Ingelheim Lights Up WPX

Cindy Zimmerman

BI FlashlightBoehringer Ingelheim gets the cool giveaway award for the World Pork Expo this year with their rechargeable pig flashlights.

These nifty little gadgets use no batteries, so they are eco-friendly and sustainable – how about that?! They were definitely the most in-demand item at the expo and B-I ran out of them by the third day. I got one of the last ones. But, for those not lucky enough to get one for free, they were selling them at the WPX store for just $5.


World Pork Expo 09 Photo Album

AgWired coverage of World Pork Expo made possible by Novus International and Boehringer Ingelheim
Novus boehringer-ingelheim

Boehringer Ingelheim, World Pork Expo