NAMA has announced two of their big award winners. The awards will be presented at the 2009 Agri-Marketing Conference, “Hot Ideas, Sizzling Solutions,” April 16, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. ZimmComm will be there once again and celebrating 5 years btw.
The National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) has named Leon Westbrock (pictured), CHS Inc., Executive Vice President and COO, Energy, as the 2009 Agribusiness Leader of the Year. The award honors outstanding leaders in agribusiness, education, government service or other agribusiness related areas who exemplify excellence in agribusiness by their significant contributions to the industry.
The National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) has honored Jon Anderson, President of OPEN ROADS, with the NAMA Marketer of the Year award. NAMA recognizes its active members with senior management of marketing and/or sales responsibilities with the NAMA Marketer of the Year award. This award is NAMA’s most prestigious honor awarded to active members of the association and honors outstanding accomplishments in the field of agri-marketing
In this week’s program you get to meet Brooke Hoelscher and Megan Ott. They’re the Monsanto Future Ag Journalist Fellowship students who were set up to cover the Commodity Classic on blogs created by Monsanto – 
For animal and meat science students from across the country, the opportunity was available to take part in these legendary training sessions at the American Meat Science Association Student Leadership Conference held on Feb. 23-25, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nev. Five South Dakota State University participants competed in a meat product development contest during the event with chocolate, peanut butter, cinnamon bacon rolls. I know…intense. I had the opportunity to try these bacon rolls, and I can assure you that they were delicious (calorie count aside). Pictured here is SDSU team member, Jarrod Bumsted, with his bacon rolls. 
Everyone at Commodity Classic this year seemed to be impressed that attendance was as good or better than ever, despite the economy.
Rick says he was pleased to see the producer organizations for four different commodities coming together for the first time under one banner. “We’re too small in agriculture to be fighting among our selves,” Rick said. “Things like Commodity Classic bring us together and help us realize how much we have in common.”
and 
The IFAJ/AMS planning committee got together since so many of us ag media types were in town for Commodity Classic. Yesterday the group went to Billy Bob’s and the Stockyards before heading to the upcoming conference hotel, the 
Agritechnica representatives Annette Reichhold (left) and Dr. Malene Conlong were talking with farmers at the Commodity Classic this week about planning a visit to Hanover, Germany for the event November 10-14.
As things slowed down today I got to sit down and visit with Hugh about his new position. It made for a good Commodity Classic week ZimmCast. Hugh is a very good friend and I’m glad for this opportunity he has. He’s be working on obtaining, managing and working with farmer driven organizations, not for profit groups, agricultural associations as well as governmental organizations. This fits right in with the kind of work that he’s been doing which includes working with the United Soybean Board and other checkoff groups. 
BASF hosted a panel at the conference to examine how today’s technology can help manage disease in wheat and cereals to meet the growing global demand for grain. The panel featured analyst Arlan Suderman of 
After Suderman’s comments, BASF technical experts on plant disease, Drs. Gary Fellows and Gary Schmitz, talked about how BASF products can help increase global production of wheat and other cereal grains by controlling the most aggressive diseases that affect those crops.