Gullickson Writer of the Year

Chuck Zimmerman

Gil GullicksonAt Successful Farming I know who gets the tough stuff to write about. It’s gotta be Gil Gullickson. As Crops Technology Editor I’m sure he has a challenge making sure his readers understand some pretty complicated stuff. Now he’s won a big award to prove he’s very good at it.

Gil Gullickson has been named Writer of the Year by his peers in the field of agricultural journalism. Gullickson, Crops Technology Editor with Meredith Corporation’s Successful Farming® magazine, received the recognition through the American Agricultural Editors’ Association (AAEA) annual Writing Awards program. The award was presented during the eighth annual Agricultural Media Summit, in Portland, Ore., which took place July 23-26, 2006. Gullickson’s three winning articles in Technical Feature (Stop Super Weeds), On-Farm Production (What’s Happened to the Miracle Crop?), and Regular Column (What Did We Learn About Asian Soybean Rust?) categories earned him the award.

Meredith had some other winners too. Read More

ACN, Ag Media Summit, Publication

Barbeque Battle Features Beef

Chuck Zimmerman

Chef Richard ChamberlainI think Chef Richard Chamberlain is really a good ambassador for the beef industry. Thanks to Diane Henderson at the Cattlemen’s Beef Board for this picture.

Several checkoff-funded programs and products earned national attention at the recent Safeway 14th Annual National Capital Barbecue Battle, a charity event that draws some 120,000 protein lovers to Washington, D.C. each year. While traditional proteins were entered in the competition, 28 of 39 teams from across the country came with a beef recipe, resulting in a special beef category, said Allison Wenther, director of retail marketing and public relations for the beef checkoff’s Northeast Beef Promotion Initiative (NEBPI).

In cooperation with retail partners, the Virginia Beef Council and the Meat Importers Council of America, the beef booth featured live cooking demonstrations by Chef Richard Chamberlain, author of the checkoff-funded Healthy Beef Cookbook. Safeway’s mobile grill team and volunteers distributed more than 10,000 sample strip steak dishes. Members of the checkoff-funded Beef Ambassador Program also circulated through the crowd and talked with visitors about beef’s flavor, nutrition and versatility.

Ag Groups, Beef

World Record Harvest Attempt In Manitoba

Chuck Zimmerman

Harry SiemensRay Wieler, President of Children’s Camp International and coordinator for World Harvest for Kids says things are ready for the big harvest set for August 5, near Winkler, Manitoba. The group’s goal is to break the record for the fastest harvest of a quarter section of wheat.

Ray WielerAll proceeds from the event will go to help send children in Asia to camp. Their goal is to raise enough money to send 40,000 kids to camp where they can receive a message of hope for their future. Children’s Camps International is an organization dedicated to giving underprivileged children in developing areas of the world an opportunity to attend camp. Based in Winkler, and under the direction of Wieler, a former Winkler Bible Camp director, the organization currently runs children’s camps in India, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Belize. Wieler said they have about 95 combines lined up. Read More

International

Updates To Monsanto Podcast Site

Chuck Zimmerman

Conversations About Plant BiotechnologySpeaking of podcasting. We were speaking about podcasting here in the office just now (really). Here’s an update to Monsanto’s Conversations About Plant Biotechnology. This very well done production now has a “total number of video segments with growers to more than 35 and representing nine of the 21 countries that grew biotech crops in 2005.” They’ve also updated the website.

The site now provides a state-of-the-art online video player, cutting-edge video distribution system, and more flexible, simpler navigation. The changes will make it easier and faster for visitors to view videos with growers and experts about the benefits of GM crops.

Agribusiness, Biotech, Podcasts

Russell Joins Brownfield Team

Chuck Zimmerman

Brownfield The Brownfield folks have added to their team. It seems to just keep growing. They’ve hired Dave Russell. There’s a well-known name in the farm broadcasting ranks. Dave began at WRFD in Columbus, Ohio, before moving on to WOWO in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and then the Indiana voice for Tribune Radio Networks. That’s where he was working back when I introduced the Brownfield Network into Indiana. Lately Dave has been serving as Agricultural Liaison for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

The addition of Russell to the Brownfield team brings the total number of National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Broadcast members up to eleven.

What percentage of the NAFB membership now works for Learfield Communications?

Media

Using The New Media Tools

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast78 - New Media WorldThe program this week is a followup to the Agricultural Media Summit in Portland, Oregon. Interest is very high in using new media tools like agriblogging and farm podcasting.

ZimmComm New Media is not the only company getting in on the act. Another company that is doing so is Dairyline. Bill Baker sends us a weekly markets update for our World Dairy Diary news blog. He was in my workshop at the AMS and is now blogging and testing podcasting. Dairyline has been what I would call a traditionally syndicated farm broadcast that airs on lots of radio stations. It still does. But Bill and his team are not resting on their laurels and hoping that things will stay the same. I interviewed him while we were at the AMS and include a segment of it in this week’s ZimmCast.

Listen here: Listen To ZimmCastZimmCast 78 (6 min MP3)

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.

Ag Media Summit, Audio, Podcasts, ZimmCast

Steve’s Last MBIC Report Podcast

Chuck Zimmerman

MBIC Report PodcastThe first ag group that I know of that started podcasting is the Missour Beef Industry Council. That’s thanks to the now former Executive Director Steve Taylor.

John KleiboekerSteve’s gone now and his replacement is board member John Kleiboecker. Read all about it on this Talking News Release. I’m really looking forward to working with John who has been working for the Missouri Soybean Association.

We will not forget the first and only Executive Director of the MBIC here in Missouri.

Steve Taylor InterviewThis last MBIC Report podcast was conducted at the going away party for Steve before he headed off to Moscow, ID. We did this late in the day outside the Missouri Beef Industry Headquarters in Columbia, MO.

It was a great party too with lots of people from all over the state coming in to celebrate Steve’s new position with the Appaloosa Horse Club.

I’m pretty sure we’ll hear from Steve again though.

Listen To MBIC Report (MP3) MBIC Report 7-26-06 (3 min MP3)

Ag Groups, Beef, Podcasts

Podcasting To Peru Farmers

Chuck Zimmerman

Not all farm podcasts have to be downloaded onto a digital audio player. I just found a story from earlier this year on bbc.co.uk. In Peru, telecentres (local broadcasting outlets) are subscribing to farm podcasts to obtain the information so they can broadcast it. The organization behind it is Practical Action.

These telecentres, many of which are run on solar power, automatically download the programmes onto CDs to rebroadcast them on local radio stations. The charity has found it effective to distribute audio material to local people, who prefer listening in their own dialect to being sent the written word.

The podcasts are regionalized so that each area and telecentre broadcasts information pertinent to farmers in that area like, “In Chanta Alta, the podcasts concentrate on cattle-raising husbandry and on dairy production.”

This just gets better though. I keep running into communications people here in the U-S who wonder if our farmers are “savvy” enough to handle a podcast or digital audio player. I don’t want to write what I think farmers would say to that. Are farmers in other countries like Peru more savvy? These Practical Action folks are archiving the programs according to the story for use in the future when these farmers have iPods.

But read on, “”Our plans are to test out some of the technologies that would enable people to listen to the podcasts on a mobile phone or a PDA, in fact on any device that can play an MP3 file,” said Dr David Grimshaw, international team leader on the project.” Whoa. Hold on. Can it be? Where else are they planning on doing this? Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

Farming, International, Podcasts

An Event Blogging Story

Chuck Zimmerman

Google ResultsIn case you needed another reason to have ZimmComm New Media blog an event let’s look at a search engine result from this afternoon. I just did a Google search for the words, Syngenta Media Day. Of 256,000 results, AgWired was the #1 result above Syngenta’s own website! Not too shabby for a little old “new media” outlet, eh?

We’re pioneering a whole new kind of online journalism here at ZimmComm New Media. I applaud Syngenta and their public relations agency, Gibbs & Soell for “getting it” and sponsoring my day there a couple weeks ago. This event started around 8am and was finished around 3pm. I posted 20 times including over 20 pictures and 5 audio interviews and they were all on AgWired before the end of the day (same day). Many of the posts were done during the actual presentations.

Syngenta can now point anyone they want, including customers or media representatives who didn’t attend, to go to AgWired and view the content and download audio or images. If someone needs hi-res pictures all they have to do is email me and I’ll return one to them immediately.

At the end of the event I burned all the pictures and audio to a CD and left it with them. They can post them onto their own website and it’s my understanding that is exactly what they plan to do. Their investment in this is minimal and yet they have immediate multimedia content that’s online before the other media attending even get home to their offices. This is not to say that you don’t want to have traditional media coverage. What I think it says is that what we can do is complement your traditional media and customer/member outreach. This isn’t a mutually exclusive proposition.

Agribusiness