It’s NAMA awards time and it looks like Rhea & Kaiser are doing fine. I didn’t make it to any awards programs so far. But there’s still the big one in April.
In the Chicago region, Rhea & Kaiser dominated with 26 awards, including Best of Show for the Caterpillar Chopper Premier and Tour public relations campaign. Nine first place awards in advertising were presented to Rhea & Kaiser in Raleigh for work on Bayer CropScience, including Best of Show for the public relations campaign “Rust Never Sleeps. Neither Do We.” Rhea & Kaiser also received nine first place awards in the New York region for Pfizer Animal Health campaigns and two first place awards for Bayer CropScience campaigns on the West Coast. (Full Release)
Zimfo Bites
A Zimfo bite is a short bit of zimmformation. I’m going to get better at this I promise. I just think calling them news bites or quick links is too boring.
We are exporting a lot of farm machinery – $6 billion worth last year, up 15%.
Ag hedging does not involve the use of clippers.
Biomaxx Systems Gets a Biotechnologist.
American Seeds (Monsanto) acquires Gold Country Seeds and Heritage Seeds.
Tractorhouse wants you to subscribe.
The press release is now “fully web enabled.”
NAFB Foundation Internship Grant Recipients
The NAFB Foundation is a great program because it’s all about the future and helping the young people who will be a part of that future. It’s the kind of program I wish all organizations had. We have always supported it. Here’s who will be receiving grants from the foundation to help with their internships this year.
Three of the Nation’s best Farm Radio Stations have just been named by the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Foundation to receive the Foundation’s Farm Broadcast Student Internship Grants. Stations WMBD/WIRL, Peoria, Illinois; KRVN, Lexington, Nebraska; and KKOW, Pittsburg, Kansas, will each receive a grant of $1,000 to further develop their Farm Broadcast internship programs.
The program started in 1997 by the NAFB Foundation provides financial assistance to stations or networks that desire to hire and train a student intern in the profession of Farm Broadcasting. In addition to the $1,000 grant, NAFB Foundation will pay the intern registration fee to the 2006 Annual NAFB Convention in November for each of the winning stations and networks.
Canadian Live Hog Prices will Remain Volatile
Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food says a combination of factors will keep hog prices volatile with some strengthening as we move toward spring. Brad Marceniuk said while live hog prices have continued to fluctuate, they have improved since the beginning of February when higher U.S. slaughter numbers and higher volumes of chicken and pork in cold storage pushed prices down.
“The key factors are U.S. hog slaughter numbers, the demand for pork, U.S. meat in cold storage and the Canadian dollar,” said Marceniuk. “Lower hog slaughter numbers in the United States over the last few weeks have been positive on US hog prices. The demand for pork in the U.S. has been weakening over the last few months which have been negative for hog prices.”
With chicken in cold storage up 46 percent year over year and pork stocks up 23 percent from December, increased meat supplies have put pressure on prices. In Canada, the strengthening Canadian dollar has been negative for local prices and will continue to put downward pressure on hog prices if the dollar continues to get stronger compared to the US dollar.
Marceniuk notes February Statistics Canada figures show the total inventory of hogs in Canada as of January 1, 2006 fell slightly from one year earlier. Canadian production has levelled off, remaining relatively flat in 2005, with little growth expected in 2006 and shouldn’t be a major influencing factor on prices.
News Briefs
What do you think about the idea of “news briefs?” I did this yesterday and once again today. We’re getting a lot of news here and rather than ignore it I’m borrowing on an idea I’ve seen on other blogs I subscribe to. The idea is to give you a headline/tease with a link to the release or the website where you can find more if you want it. Love to have your feedback.
Weather alerts by SKYLERT delivers real-time Weather, Homeland Security, Amber Alerts, Hurricane and Tsunami Weather Warnings instantly to cellphones, pagers, PDAs, Blackberries and email accounts.
New website for “A Self-Propelled, Constant-Speed Spray Vaccinator for Commercial Layer Chickens.”
Rob Robinson has been named operating head of Golden Harvest Seeds, Inc.
You can find an interesting list of public relations blogs over at PR Meets The WWW.
Free Hidden Valley Collection of Kid-Approved Recipes – The Small Bites Cookbook
Commodity Classic Photo Album
At Commodity Classic last week I took a bunch of pictures and didn’t use them all in my posts. So, in case you want to see more I put a selection of them (57) into a Flickr photo album for you.
You can see the them here: 2006 Commodity Classic Photo Album
News Briefs
For your perusal:
Codex Alimentarius launches new website on Food Additives
Ridomil Gold Bravo SC Now Available for Use on Vegetables and Potatoes (from Syngenta)
Post a “FREE For Sale Listing” on TractorHouse.com.
Rhea & Kaiser Marketing Communications, an integrated marketing communications agency well known for its leading portfolio of agricultural clients, hosted 10 students from Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences (CHSAS) during February’s Groundhog Job Shadowing Week, a national program that gives middle and high school students a firsthand look at day-to-day life in the workplace.
Trans Ova Genetics has announced the appointment of Chris Sigurdson to the position of Sales & Marketing Director, based out of the corporate headquarters in Sioux Center.
Follow College Students on Domestic Fuel
The idea of blogging college students seems to be catching on. Over on Domestic Fuel, we’re getting some daily reports from students who are on a cross country tour fueled by E85. They’re in a Chevy Avalanche. We just got the first reports in today and I’m sure Cindy will have them posted later. You can see the original post on it here.
We found out about it at the last minute and would have liked to have set it up differently but this works. They’re writing about their experience and we’re providing an outlet. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of feedback it generates.
Shamrock Shindig In Missouri
It’s not St. Patty’s day yet but green soy beer was flowing in Jefferson City this evening at the second annual Shamrock Shindig. This is our Missouri Director of Agriculture’s showcase reception for our legislators. It’s a great party.
In the picture you can see Director of Ag, Fred Ferrell (right), welcoming guests. I avoided the name tags since they didn’t have one made for me. They were ear tags and they had pre-loaded the guests names into a computer. Then when you walked through the entrance the tag was read and you showed up on a computer screen. It was to demonstrate the animal id system that the Department is supporting. I thought it was a little scary that the Department is tracking people!
I interviewed Director Ferrell, although I had to edit out his greetings since he would stop and individually greet each person that came in. You can hear my interview with Fred here: 
Fred Ferrell Interview (1 min. MP3)
By the way, Missouri’s commodity groups all cook up and serve food. It’s judged and the overall winner this year was the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association with their beef stew.
Keep Your iPressroom Updated
I have never used iPressroom but their news release just came in and prompted me to write about a frustration I’m having today. In their release they say “. . . reports a sharp rise in the number of inquiries for “Internet Pressroom Solutions” over the last three months, outpacing the number of incoming requests for “News Wire Distribution” for the first time in the company’s history.”
Here’s how they define an internet pressroom vs. news distribution:
An internet pressroom is the section of an organization’s web site where press materials, publicity photos, corporate facts sheets, video news releases, audio news releases and other corporate communications can be accessed. News distribution refers to the electronic delivery of press releases and other corporate communications.
Okay. Not having any idea how good their internet pressroom solutions are, I do want to encourage companies to pay more attention to them. My frustration is receiving a release and not finding it on the company or organizational website. One of the reasons I’d like to find it is so that I can link to it, which I hope the company or public relations staff would want. You may be surprised how often a company sends out a timely news release and then waits days, weeks even, before posting it on their website. I just tried to find 3 different releases on 3 different websites that I’ve had for over a week and none of them showed up in the “current news releases” section of their website. Why?
Back to iPressroom’s release. Here’s an excerpt that I completely agree with:
“The web is now the first place journalists, investors and stakeholders turn for information and PR people know it. The press release actually has more value today from an archival stand point, than as a news breaking tool, as long as people can find them when they want them online,” said iPressroom founder and president Eric Schwartzman.
By the way, you can find the iPressroom release from a direct link on their homepage.