CFWF Farm Tour

Chuck Zimmerman

Oysters on a RopeHere’s some more information courtesy of Dan Danford, AdFarm, from the Canadian Farm Writer’s Federation conference.

These are some pictures from Friday’s farm tour at the Canadian Farm Writer’s Federation Conference. Our first stop was Fanny Bay Oysters. They grow, process, market and distribute their own farmed shellfish. It was very interesting to learn how they actually seed the bay with the microscopic eggs and later string the baby oysters on ropes for easier processing of adults. It was much more like “farming” than I would have expected. After an overview of the operation, they offered the group some very fresh product. I’ve also included a shot of the bay behind the facility where you can see mounds of oyster shells being aged as part of the production process.

Grassi Point Farm MarketOur next two stops on the CFWF tour were Grassi Point Farm Market and Beaufort Winery.

Grassi Point Farm Market was started in 1889 here on Vancouver Island. It’s an excellent example of how market gardening, agri-tourism, fish and wildlife can co-exist. A fourth generation operation, Grassi Point Farm raises beef, taps big maples, operates a roadside farm market and features a fish channel trail and camping.

Wine is ServedBeaufort Winery is owned by Susan and Jeff Vandermolen, who purchased the land in July 2006 and produced their first wines in 2007, winning three medals at the Northwest Wine Summit. Since opening to the public, they have had more than 2,600 visitors to the winery’s tasting room. The farm is 85 acres, eight of which are currently in grapes (watched over by their Easter Island head custom carved from one of their trees). Currently 20 acres are in hay and on acre in Christmas trees. They also have several acres in blackberries which are used in their award-winning dessert wine. As you can see from the pictures, it was raining heavily during our visit. Luckily, the tasting room was dry and cozy.

You can see more of his photos in this online album and yes, I want to go next year! Thanks Dan.

Agencies, International

Driving Green Down South

Chuck Zimmerman

John Deere Drive GreenThis week I’ll be driving Green while Cindy will be in St. Louis with the executives attending the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, AgExecutive Forum. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more from her about that.

Meanwhile I’ll be in Sarasota learning about the latest that John Deere has to offer in the way of small tractors, compact tractors, utility vehicles and more. We’re going to be “in the field” with these machines and if they’re letting the media on, I hope it’s a big one!

It’ll probably be late Wednesday before I get much to post. Tomorrow’s a travel day so things might be a little light until I get there.

Agribusiness, John Deere

Dairy and NFL Helping Kids Get Fit

Chuck Zimmerman

Grant KohlerI’m still in World Dairy Expo mode and thought you might be interested in this program.

Grant Kohler is a dairy farmer from Utah where he milks 300 cows with a family operation. He was attending World Dairy Expo to talk about the Childhood Nutrition Fitness Initiative that’s a joint project of the National Dairy Council and the National Football League.

He says, “It brings a package not just to the cafeteria of the school but a package that can engage the principals and teachers.” The NFL teams are on board to provide their players as spokespersons when and where needed. He says the program includes a full nutritional plan that of course includes dairy. He’s proud to say that over 40,000 schools have already signed on. Here’s some excerpts from a recent release on the project.

To poise the multi-year program for success, the NDC will spend $100 million over five years to support this initiative, including school grants. The NDC will spend an additional $150 million on other efforts aimed at improving child health and wellness.

“We are taking a leadership role to help kids win the battle for good health,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Our players know the importance of staying healthy, and it’s important that we help young fans understand the value of exercise.”

You can listen to my interview with Grant as part of our Milking Parlor Podcast: milking-parlor-39.mp3

To subscribe to the Milking Parlor podcast, here are some instructions.

World Dairy Expo 2008 Photo Album

Ag Groups, Audio, Dairy, World Dairy Expo

Dairy Expo Talk

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast-190 - Dairy Expo TalkThis week’s ZimmCast is being sponsored by DTN and The Progressive Farmer. “DTN and The Progressive Farmer deliver the right content to the right audience across multiple media platforms—it all adds up to you moving the needle with producers now.”

Stephanie GableLast week’s World Dairy Expo provided another opportunity to see a lot of my friends in the agricultural marketing world. One of those is Stephanie Gable, Novus International, pictured here (left) in her booth at World Dairy Expo. Stephanie is now the Marketing Manager for Ruminents which is a global position and one that will have her visiting a number of countries. She’s still planning to stay active in NAMA too. In fact, she attended the local Badger Chapter reception because the networking opportunities the organization provides are a big help as she moves into a new area of agribusiness.

ABN RadioI also spoke with Lindsay Hill, ABN Radio, about their website makeover. One of the things that I noticed right away was the emphasis on the ABN Radio brand vs. the BARN. First of all, Lindsay says visitors to the website will find a lot more content. She says they did a lot of back end work that has made it easier to post embedded audio and video. When it comes to the brand, they decided to utilize ABN Radio for their radio network because of its 36 year history. They’re using the BARN brand for their non-radio products like video. I found it interesting that the most visited pages on their website continue to be their personal blogs!

The program this week ends with music from the Podsafe Music Network. This one is called “When The Dairy Caught on Fire” from MARC GUNN. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.

You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: Listen To ZimmCastZimmCast 190 (17 min MP3)

Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:Interviews with Stephanie Gable and Lindsay Hill - ZimmCast 190

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar. You can also subscribe in iTunes

Audio, Dairy, Media, ZimmCast

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

  • National 4-H Council has announced a repeat partnership with Southern States Cooperative retail stores to run the “4-H Paper Clover” campaign, an exciting consumer-driven fundraising promotion where consumers purchase a paper clover at the register for $1 from Sunday, Oct. 5 to Sunday, Oct. 19. A list of participating locations can be found here. Fifty cents from each $1 donation will go to the local 4-H program and the remainder will go to National 4-H Council to underwrite the promotion.
  • Lori Hallowell has been promoted to vice president at Bader Rutter in the agency’s account management and public relations groups. Hallowell joined the agency in 1994 as an account executive.
  • Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer welcomes the President’s intention to designate Elizabeth Johnson as Acting Under Secretary of Food Safety. Johnson has most recently served as Chief Assistant to Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner and Deputy Chief of Staff since May 2005. A registered dietitian, Beth Johnson joined USDA in 2002.
  • Investigative reporter Tim Findley will be American Agri-Women’s keynote speaker at their annual convention on Nov. 5-9 at the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio. Findley made a name for himself during the most liberal decade in the nation’s most liberal metropolis, San Francisco. He is a 25-year veteran of the media industry.
    Zimfo Bytes

    AdFarm at CFCW

    Chuck Zimmerman

    AdFarm at CFCWThanks to Dan Danford, AdFarm, I’ve got more pictures from the Canadian Farm Writer’s Federation conference. I think this photo is the AdFarm folks who attended the CFCW Conference.

    Last night CFWF 2008 wrapped up with closing ceremonies and their annual awards banquet. It was very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the CFWF Conference and Ag Media Summit. While AMS is certainly much larger, they both seem to have the same camaraderie and passion for journalism and agriculture. Beside the similar awards format, they also have their own band! Just like The GMO'sQuasimojo makes its annual appearance, so do The GMOs (pictured). Although the GMOs lineup changed a bit this year, so I heard them discussing a possible name change to either The ‘Low Inputs’ or the ‘Certified Inorganics.’

    I’ve got some more stories from Dan to post when I have time.

    In the meantime, I have put all the photos he sent me in an online photo album.

    Agencies, International, Media

    Soybean Sky

    Chuck Zimmerman

    I’m trying out a new Casio Exilim EX-Z100 camera and used it while biking on the Katy Trail today.

    I’m still trying to decide if I want to replace my Exilim EX-S770 which I’m planning to give to my parents when I present them with a new Gateway PC we bought them. The Z100 records video in a more YouTube friendly format, so it has that going for it, along with a few more megapixels.

    So, here’s what some of the soybeans are looking like in the central Missouri area.

    Uncategorized

    Get Dairy Impact Photos

    Chuck Zimmerman

    Mathew JoyceIf you’re a media person needing some dairy information, especially photos, then Dairy Impact is where you need to go.

    This is a website of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Here’s WMMB, Vice President, Producer Communications & Programs, Matt Joyce, showing it off to World Dairy Expo Dairy Woman of the Year, Marion Barlass at this year’s Expo.

    Matt says you’ll find the largest collection of dairy related photos on the web when you visit.

    You can listen to my interview with Matt as part here: wdx-08-joyce.mp3

    World Dairy Expo 2008 Photo Album

    Ag Groups, Dairy, Media, World Dairy Expo

    Successful Farming/John Deere Win min

    Chuck Zimmerman

    Successful Farming Min AwardSuccessful Farming magazine and John Deere have received some recognition for their integration of web based communications content from the min magazine Integrated Marketing Awards.

    Successful Farming magazine and John Deere have been awarded the min Integrated Marketing Awards First Place honor in Web/Online Bundling for their partner program, CropTechTour. min’s Integrated Marketing Awards salute the campaigns, ongoing programs and innovative people who’ve raised the bar on magazine marketing programs. The CropTech Tour program was recognized for in the integrated web content, video, print integration, and customer interaction throughout the program.

    Successful Farming was also a Merit winner in the Events Category for the Super Powering Profits program, which was sponsored by Asgrow. For a complete list of finalists and winners, please see the min website.

    According to Jana Reiker, Sales Development Manager, Successful Farming, “For the 2nd straight year, SF has won a First Place Award at the min Integrated Marketing Awards in New York. The min (media industry news) awards included some tough national consumer publications in our category, and Successful Farming represented the Agriculture Industry very well.

    It’s been a pleasure to work with Barry Nelson at John Deere; Kelly Schwalbe & Leigh Ann Cleaver from BCS; and our Editors, John Walter and Jeff Caldwell; along with a great partnership with the Certified Crop Association members on the CropTechTour, and see this program be so successful and continue to grow with our Agriculture Online audience.”

    Advertising, Agribusiness, Media

    AgJobNetwork Wants to be Disruptive

    Chuck Zimmerman

    Ag Job NetworkIt looks like the AgJobNetwork, started by Aggie-Lance founder, Mark Jewell, is off and running. Yes, there are companies still trying to figure out this “new media” thing.

    Rooted in New Media – the AgJobNetwork has grown at an astounding rate from no registered users to more than 1,500 in North America in less than 30 days. And, word’s spreading online to their friends and colleagues, so the AgJobNetwork is still quickly growing.  Today it’s serving a hungry job seeking audience that wants to hear about employment opportunities in a new way! And, ag recruiters are scrambling to learn how to tap this new online network to help them fill jobs.

    How does it work?

    “According to a new book, Groundswell, recent statistics show that more than 73% of Americans are online, and their use of new media is vastly increasing.  Yet, very few companies have figured out how to serve them through social media,” says Lincoln, Nebraska-based AgJobNetwork founder Mark Jewell. “Based on the reception from job seekers weʼre on to something big. It’s working! But, we need to bring more agribusinesses into the 21st century using online technology to get their job openings out in front of those seeking jobs – AgJobNetwork provides that online gathering point, or community!” 

    Why does it work? 

    “Todayʼs job seeker needs to be served – they arenʼt necessarily going to come directly to you,” says Jewell.  “You are going to find your best talent is already serving in a position they enjoy – or hasnʼt learned about your companyʼs opportunities yet.”  That’s why Jewell founded the AgJobNetwork. “We can meet people in a place they already spend time – in new media sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, the Blogosphere, and we can help them learn of new job opportunities even when theyʼre not looking,” adds Jewell, “Our goal is to be as disruptive as possible!”

    Agribusiness