I really like this graphic from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. When I saw it today it made me think of next week’s World Dairy Expo. I’ll be there starting on Wednesday morning.
Wisconsin Dairy Impact.com is a new resource for media types like yours truly. You can find lots of graphics like this one and almost 3,000 images.
As they say, “Downloadable news resources to report on Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland.”
You may remember that Laura McNamara went to Honduras this summer and met with the Chorti Maya and a man who is working to help them increase their agricultural production, Billy Collins.
There is a group of indigenous people in Honduras that live off an average of $300 a year… less than one dollar a day. At least two months out of every year they starve. That’s the reality as Billy Collins sees it. Billy has been working with the Chortí Maya, the direct descendants of the Mayan Indians, for five years.
Well, she’s going back to help out and is seeking donations to take with her. So, I thought I’d let you know in case you’d like to help out. Cindy and I have. You can find instructions for using PayPal to make a donation on her blog.
Technorati, the blog indexing authority, is releasing its annual “State of the Blogosphere” in 5 installments. The first one is out and it’s got lots of interesting information, focusing on who is blogging.
Bloggers Self-Identified as Personal, Professional, or Corporate
Bloggers are not a homogenous group. One way of segmenting bloggers is by their blog type:
* Personal: blog about topics of personal interest not associated with your work
* Professional: blog about your industry and profession but not in an official capacity for your company
* Corporate: blog for your company in an official capacity
Four out of five bloggers are personal bloggers who blog about topics of personal interest. About half of bloggers are professional bloggers — blogging is not necessarily their full-time job, but they blog about their industry or profession in an unofficial capacity. 12% of bloggers blog in an official capacity for their company.
Of course, these groups are not mutually exclusive. More than half of professional and corporate bloggers are also personal bloggers. This could be on a separate blog, or they may blog about personal interests within their professional blog.
In case you’re wondering, AgWired is currently ranked at 144,722 with an authority of 48 (means that 48 other blogs have linked to AgWired in last 180 days). Where do you fit in?
An “urban farmer” has received one of the MacArthur Fellows awards.
The MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2008. This past week, the recipients learned in a single phone call from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. The new Fellows work across a broad spectrum of endeavors and include a neurobiologist, a saxophonist, a critical care physician, an urban farmer, an optical physicist, a sculptor, a geriatrician, a historian of medicine, and an inventor of musical instruments. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.
You can learn more about him and what he does in this video:
Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded. Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting.
I am so lame. I was supposed to alert you to the Georgia Peanut Tour before the tour. But guess what? This is the great thing about a blog. It’s archived!
So take a look at what agriblogging professional Joy Carter did. I think she’s raising the bar for you ag group communications managers. I think Joy has been drinking some of that new media Kool-Aid.
Can you say, “Joy gets it?”
Here’s a link to her photo album.
Our emcee for the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium was Dr. Klaas Okkinga, Brand Manager, Ingelvac CircoFLEX.
He says, “The goal of the symposium is to really bring the latest information that we find in trials we recently conducted, to share those with our customers, who in the past asked questions that these trials are hopefully answering.” Klaas was a little surprised that the attendance was even higher than they expected. He says they try to pack a lot of information in a short time frame, making it worthwhile for their customers to invest their time in attending.
He also presented the PCVAD Research Awards and says, “The goal of the award is to stimulate practical applied research in the field by researchers and veterinarians to help us find answers in the field of PDVAD management.”
Attending the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium from the corporate marketing group was Dr. Petra Maas. She is the Technical Manager for Ingelvac CircoFLEX.
Her presentation was focused on a behind the scenes look at the research and development of Ingelvac CircoFLEX-MycoFLEX. She says the other speakers presented all the data, she just wanted to let attending veterinarians know more about the science behind the vaccines and why they’re working so well in the field.
“Qualifying Animal Responses to Various Immunization Protocols.” That’s the title of the talk given at the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium by Dr. Keith Bretey. He’s a professional services veterinarian for BIVI. He says that basically means comparing the negative side effects of different vaccines.
The BIVI products Ingelvac CircoFLEX and MycoFLEX were used in the study and he says they were much less impactive on the pigs compared to other products.
Dr. Ernest Sanford came to the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium from Canada. He had some of the hottest new research to present. The title of his presentation was, “Impact of PCV2 Vaccination on Subclinical PCVAD Cases in Canada, France and U.S.”
He says this topic has come up fairly recently and they’ve now got some new research data with some interesting results. For one thing, he says the research showed that “. . . obvious thing would be that you probably need to vaccinate pigs against circovirus whether or not you believe you have a circovirus problem.” Another finding that he says came as a big surprise was regarding carcass characteristics with the vaccinated pigs showing more desirable characteristics compared to the pigs that weren’t vaccinated. He says it was significant enough to pay for the vaccination.
