New Monsanto Weed Resistance Website

Chuck Zimmerman

Weed Resistance ManagementI didn’t receive a release on this but was alerted to a new Monsanto website for farmers. It’s all about how to take care of pesky weed problems and called “Weed Resistance Management.”

I got excited when I saw a section on the site called “Voices From The Field.” Now that would be a place to “hear” a voice and sure enough there are a couple of audio files. They’re saved as .wmv files which will play fine if you have Windows Media Player but I would recommend saving them as .mp3 files which will play on basically any media player. Hey, maybe Monsanto could podcast them too, then growers could subscribe to them and listen on their computers or digital audio players when they’re on the road!

Agribusiness, Internet

McCormick Company Expo Exhibit

Chuck Zimmerman

Kathy CornettYou never know who you’ll see when you go to a farm show. I’m here blogging the World Dairy Expo (World Dairy Diary) and the booth next to my little office is for the Southwest Plains Dairy Directory. I posted an announcement about it here on AgWired recently. And the person who’s working the exhibit is Kathy Cornett, Chairman of McCormick Company and a past president of the National Agri-Marketing Association I might add.

The Dairy Directory her company has put together is an interesting project and one that shows how companies, and yes even advertising agencies, can and I think, should start looking at ways to grow their business in new directions. Of course McCormick has long been a company that does things in a non-traditional way. Remember when they started AgriTalk for example?

I like that non-traditional stuff. Instead of saying “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” I prefer “Let’s do something we’ve never done before.” Like a blog about agricultural marketing!

Agencies, World Dairy Expo

Value Added On CornTalk

Chuck Zimmerman

CornTalk podcastCornTalk, a weekly program for the Missouri Corn Growers Association, features an interview with the CEO, Gary Marshall. Gary talks about added value – and how it is benefiting Missouri corn growers. Last week USDA Rural Development announced the awarding of grant assistance under the Value Added Producer Grant program, and Missouri received more funding than any other single state.

You can listen to this week’s CornTalk here: Download MP3 File

CornTalk is a weekly AgWired podcast which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar.

Ag Groups, Audio, Corn, Podcasts

Bader Rutter Promotion

Chuck Zimmerman

Bader RutterI like seeing a “farm” background in the bio on someone involved in agrimarketing. However, it’s certainly not required. Congrats John.


John Christenson has been promoted to account executive at Bader Rutter & Associates in the agency’s account services group. Christenson joined Bader Rutter in 2003 as an assistant account executive. His previous experience includes working for the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, The Ad Store in New York and on his family farm.

Agencies

I Want My “Certified” Over Easy

Chuck Zimmerman

United Egg Producers CertifiedI eat a lot of eggs and didn’t even know there was a “seal” of quality for them. I’m going to be keeping my eyes out for it now. See what you can learn if you become AgWired?

The egg industry’s new seal which assures consumers that the eggs they are purchasing came from hens that were properly cared for under scientifically-based animal husbandry guidelines has won approval from federal regulators, the United Egg Producers (UEP) announced today.

Ag Groups

Blogging From The Fishbowl At Expo

Chuck Zimmerman

ChuckIt’s pretty warm and humid here in Madison, WI at World Dairy Expo. I’m very proud and happy with my little office (The Fishbowl) in the Coliseum. This used to be the receptionists office and now I guess it just serves as a communications equipment hub. Anyway, this is where I’ll be giving you some World Dairy Expo updates. You can see a lot more on World Dairy Diary!

World Dairy Expo

Learn About Qualisoy From The Board

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast36 - Kent GronlieThis week I’m off to World Dairy Expo and will be blogging it here and even more frequently on World Dairy Diary. So the ZimmCast this week features an interview with one of World Dairy Diary and that’s Qualisoy. I interviewed Kent Gronlie, a North Dakota soybean grower. He’s on the Qualisoy board and is also Domestic Marketing Committe chairman for the United Soybean Board. Kent talks about what Qualisoy is all about and how why they decided to get involved in World Dairy Expo this year.

You can listen to this week’s ZimmCast with Kent here: Download MP3 File

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

Ag Groups, Audio, Podcasts, Soybean, USB, ZimmCast

Animal ID Conference Concludes

Chuck Zimmerman

ID-InfoExpoI was sent an end-of-the-week newsletter that talked about the ID-Info Expo 2005, put on by the National Institute For Animal Agriculture. This sounded interesting and there’s a conference website. However, eventhough it says “Visit often for updated meeting information…” all I can find is what I would call pre-conference information. The conference ended Thursday. There’s also a little box on the home page that says “MEETING UPDATES” but I guess that was for pre-meeting updates. Here’s a perfect example of an event that could benefit from a blog and someone to “blog” it! Animal ID is a hot topic. I’ll bet I saw at least 20 news releases this week from different organizations, mostly calling on Congress to do something. However, here you have a whole conference on it and I’ve seen no information on it except what a member organization put in their newsletter.

In fact, if you do a Google search for it in “news” there’s no results. I’m not writing this to pick on NIAA at all but to point out that with all the time and money invested in a conference website, it could be set up as a blog to start with. It would then be search engine optimized and someone could at least post a couple articles a day during the conference with pictures and maybe some audio. We’ve been doing this here at AgWired since early this year so if you’d like find out how to do this or would like us to “do it for you” just give us a call!!

Ag Groups

Philom Bios Gets Together With Australia’s GRDC

Chuck Zimmerman

Philom BiosPhilom Bios, a Canadian firm, has signed an agreement with an Australian organization to commercialize some new innoculant technologies. Sounds very technical to me.

Philom Bios Inc. and the Grains Research & Development Corporation of Australia (GRDC) have announced the signing of an agreement which will see Philom Bios evaluate and commercialize a number of novel inoculant technologies.

In case you’re not familiar with the GRDC, The GRDC is one of the world’s leading grains research investment organisations,
funded by grain growers and government and is responsible for planning, investing and overseeing research and development, delivering improvements in production, sustainability and profitability across the Australian grains industry.

Agribusiness

Resistance Fighters Unite & Email Your Friends

Chuck Zimmerman

Syngenta Resistance FighterEvery once in a while you see a cool website and you want to let others know about it. Actually that’s the goal of the new Syngenta Resistance Fighter website. It’s a viral thing. Meaning they want visitors to let others know. Kind of like I’m doing now, actually. Way to go Syngenta. I do have a question though. Does this come out of the tv budget, the radio budget, the public relations budget or better yet, has Syngenta created a viral budget or as I saw the other day, a digital media budget?

I really like the theme of this site and think growers will too. It has all the mood elements of a secret basement hideout for a bunch of “resistance” fighters who are planning their operations. In fact, if you leave your browser on the home page you’ll begin hearing sounds of the “other” people in the room.

The site is complete with forums you can read and participate in. It was introduced at Farm Progress Show, which I missed, or I would have pointed you to it sooner.

On the home page you can click on different items in the room. I had to use a part of the page of “Resistance Fighter Radio” because it uses audio and it’s very well-produced and just works. To get there you click on the radio that’s on the desk.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Agribusiness, Internet