AgWired

World Food Day will be celebrated October 16. The big ceremonies will take place at FAO headquarters in Rome. I got to observe them a few years ago and it’s a very interesting event as they bring in people from so many countries. They have to have good interpreters so you can listen to all the speeches. It all seems to work though.

More than 150 countries around the world will observe the day with special events, seminars, conferences, contests and media campaigns. World Food Day is celebrated every year on October 16 to mark the anniversary of the founding of FAO in 1945. The World Food Day theme this year, “Agriculture and intercultural dialogue”, recalls the contribution of different cultures to world agriculture. Civilization is founded on agriculture. Throughout history, the intercultural movement of crops and livestock breeds revolutionized diets, improved nutrition and reduced poverty.

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While we’re still seeking ways to help hurricane Katrina victims here in the United States there’s also tremendous need for the victims of the Pakistan earthquake. I don’t know if you’ve seen much coverage of this tragedy but it’s immense.

The Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has just issued a call for $7 million to help farm families in the region.

FAO has launched an appeal for $7 million to help farm families affected by the earthquake in northern Pakistan resume their agricultural activities over the next six months. Following the immediate rescue and relief activities and as soon as conditions permit, FAO will field assessment missions to determine the impact of the earthquake on agriculture and to work with the Government to prepare a plan for reconstruction of the agriculture sector, the U.N. agency said.

There are a number of organizations who are accepting donations for relief efforts for earthquake victims. Please keep them in mind as you consider your charitable giving this fall. If you’re unsure of where you can provide help I recommend a Google search and you’ll find lots of choices.

Update to this post:
It was just brought to my attention by the folks at U. S. Wheat Associates that there is a very good web resource that provides links to many organizations that are responding to this disaster. It’s called Network For Good.

Over 10,000 visitors have made their way to AgWired! It’s a milestone. Hey, some may say it’s a miracle. We say, thank you and stop by again. We’ve now had more visitors than the population of Sleepy Hollow, IL, a suburb of Chicago. Pretty cool, huh? Why did we pick Sleepy Hollow. Absolutely no good reason except they were the first city of that size (10,104, 2004 U.S. Census) I found Googling around.

The exact number of “unique” visitors as of this posting is 10,212. That’s since our launch March 15 of this year. Not bad for a little ole blog about the business of agrimarketing. Who would think that so many people want to know about our business? Who would think that there are that many people in the business? There are and that number grows daily.

Want to know more about our visitors and traffic? Want to promote your company to these people? Just give me a call. You know where.

BTW. The map is courtesy of Expedia.

The corn and soybean harvest is in full swing and I know that’s important to many of you, especially if you’re trying to reach a grower.

In case you didn’t know it you can find reports on crop harvest progress like the one released today from USDA’s NASS website. As you might imagine there’s a wide difference in how much progress has been made from state to state. For example, here in Missouri corn is about 77 percent done but in Minnesota it’s only 8 percent!

I suggest you bookmark their calendar of reports page and go there to find the most recent report when it comes out.