It’s back to work after a very nice Thanksgiving weekend. So let’s jump right into it with this week’s program. One of the interviews I did at the recent NAFB Convention was with Mark Leitman, Director, Agriculture Programs, Propane Education & Research Council (PERC). Thanks to Sarah Robinett, Osborn & Barr Communications for helping set me up!
There’s a lot of familiarity with checkoff programs like beef or pork but not as much with some others. PERC is funded through a federally mandated law which provides some significant funding which is used for research and promotion programs. I interviewed Mark to learn more about how his organization is structured and what they do with all that money.
Mark says the PERC is celebrating 10 years since it was signed into law. Mark says that they just completed a return on investment study that shows that even with the challenges facing the energy industry the propane checkoff is providing a very positive return to the dollars invested. He also pointed out that unlike other ag-related checkoff programs that are administered by USDA, PERC is administered by the Department of Energy.
One of the cool things that PERC did this year was experiment with podcasting. Mark says they feel like the podcast series they did worked well and that they’re looking into more uses of new media in getting their message out to the consuming public, which includes farmers since they have programs targeted to agriculture. mark-leitman.mp3
Download this week’s program: 
ZimmCast 95 (10 min MP3)
Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:
zimmcast95-11-27-06.mp3The 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.
It’s been a very nice Thanksgiving weekend so far. I’ve been playing catch up on a lot of things that were on hold with all the travel of the past several weeks. 
Our cornucopia runneth over with gratitude for our friends this Thanksgiving. We have done business with about 40 different entities this year, including 10 companies, 10 ag-related organizations, 14 agencies and two farm media groups! Not too bad for a little ole new media company. I’m very thankful to everyone we’ve had the honor to work with this year so far.
I’ll bet that farmers will use SMS Mobile right after they get done checking their email, news feeds and the weather. How many of them have a mobile device already? Anyone know?
I got this story after the video feed had already been sent out this morning but I doubt I would have been able to receive it anyway. How about a link to it folks?
I was kind of out of it at the NAFB convention last week due to a very bad cold so thankfully I’ve been in receipt of some information I did not know. Post Update: Cindy just reminded me that I have neglected to mention that 
There’s a new leadership group at the 
Good old (not old really) Stewart Doan got a big award at last week’s NAFB convention. He was named the Farm Broadcaster of the Year. Looking at his schedule of duties I hope he has an open account at Starbucks.