Pork Producers Say Impossible Pork is Impossible

Cindy Zimmerman

Pork producers have a beef with impossible pork.

As Impossible Foods debuted its latest plant-based food offering at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) called out the company for violating food labeling laws.

Citing law that prohibits the use of words that redefine pork as it has been known by consumers for centuries, Dr. Dan Kovich, director of science and technology for the National Pork Producers Council, issued the following statement:

“What’s impossible is to make pork from plants. This is a brazen attempt to circumvent decades of food labelling law and centuries of precedence. Any adjective placed in front of the word pork can only refine it, not redefine it. It’s not pork. It’s not pork sausage. It can’t be labelled as such.”

The pork producer group’s position is that plant-based and cell-cultured products designed to mimic real meat must face the same stringent regulatory requirements as livestock agriculture, including truthful labeling standards.

AgWired Animal, Animal Agriculture, Food, Meat, NPPC, Pork

Precision Ag Bytes 1/8

Carrie Muehling

  • Marrone Bio Innovations Inc. announced that two of its biofungicide products — Stargus® and Regalia® — have been approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency for indoor and outdoor use on hemp plants.
  • Lindsay Corporation, a leading global manufacturer and distributor of irrigation and infrastructure equipment and technology, and Farmers Edge, a global leader in digital agriculture, announced a plan to connect and digitize two million irrigated acres by the end of 2021.
  • The third largest indoor U.S. farm show, presented by Farm Credit Services of America and AgDirect, will be held January 28-30 in Des Moines, Iowa at the Iowa Events Center. Spread across nearly 8 acres, the Iowa Power Farming Show features the broadest mix of ag-related products and services found in the Midwest.
  • Two companies have jointly developed a high-speed planting system to be introduced for the 2021 planting season. Ag Leader announced its high-speed planting system SureSpeed, to serve row crop farmers with accurate seed placement at speeds up to 12 miles per hour. The meter with integrated delivery system was developed in collaboration with Kinze Manufacturing, which will market it as True Speed™. The two companies will distribute the technology through their respective dealer networks.
AgWired Precision, Precision Ag Bytes

ZimmCast 633 – Looking Back at 2019

Chuck Zimmerman

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. In this week’s program my poor laryngitis recovering voice takes a look back at 2019 with a list of the top posts on AgWired and some statistics about photos, audio and video.

I also share an excerpt of an interview that was produced in October of 2019 and had the highest number of downloads. It was an interview I did with Geoff Cooper, Renewable Fuels Association. Next I shared an end of the year interview Cindy did at the last event we attended, the 2019 ASTA CSS and Seed Trade Expo. Cindy interviewed ASTA President/CEO, Andy Lavigne, about the event.

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the ZimmCast, want to suggest a topic, need help producing a podcast, then please let me know. I’m AgriBlogger on Twitter or just email me at chuck@zimmcomm.biz.

That’s the ZimmCast for this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and thank you for listening.

Listen to the ZimmCast here: ZimmCast 633 - Looking Back at 2019
Subscribe to the ZimmCast by clicking here.

Audio, ZimmCast

Animal Ag Bites 1/6

Carrie Muehling

  • National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Jennifer Houston issued a celebratory statement regarding the new trade deals with Japan and the European Union (EU), which went into effect on New Year’s Day.
  • American Dairy Association North East, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, revealed the recreation of three of the state’s most popular pro-sports mascots — Philadelphia Flyers’ Gritty, Philadelphia Eagles’ Swoop and Pittsburgh Steelers’ Steely McBeam — all carved from 1,000 pounds of butter. The butter sculpture was on display at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
AgWired Animal, Animal Bites

AgWorks and FieldReveal Joining Forces

Cindy Zimmerman

AgWorks and FieldReveal have teamed up to offer the most complete and efficient agronomy management tools in the ag retail industry and they are excited to share that vision at the AgWorks Annual Users Conference this week in Kansas City.

Both companies were at the Ag Retailers Association Conference and Expo last month in New Orleans to talk about what they have to offer the industry. AgWorks Director of Sales Matt Hull says their HighQ Data Analytics help retailers better serve their customers. “We’ve added a budget analysis component to HighQ… allowing for multiple layers of data to be incorporated into each field and understand where money is being spent wisely and where it isn’t,” said Hull.

Listen to an interview with Hull here:
ARA19 Interview with Matt Hull, Director of Sales, AgWorks Software (5:34)

FieldReveal Account Manager Nick Waite says their platform focuses on connectivity to develop and implement the best nutrient management strategies to optimize fertility and seed inputs. “Using a platform like ours, using the zones we develop, producers are really able to understand where they can put their fertilizer and seed inputs to get the best return on them – and that’s really what it’s all about,” said Waite.

Learn more about FieldReveal in this interview with Waite:
ARA19 Interview with Nick Waite, FieldReveal (4:21)

AgWorks and FieldReveal share similar goals and values in the ag retail industry with a combined 50 years of operation.

AgWired Precision, ARA, Audio, Precision Agriculture

New Topics Added to Agricultural Hemp Classic Agenda

Cindy Zimmerman

Heart of America Agricultural Hemp ConferenceTwo topics have been added to the agenda for the upcoming “Heart of America Agricultural Hemp Classic” – a hemp producer conference open to growers throughout the Midwest organized by the Missouri Hemp Association.

Attendees will now have the opportunity to hear about the “Native Prairie Hemp Subdivision”, which is a small-scale lower-risk opportunity for MHA members to learn hands-on about hemp production without having to make a significant investment. They will also get to learn about the new “One-Voice Program”, which is an effort by multiple hemp associations across a multi-state area to join together with one shared voice to push growers interests at a state and federal level.

The Heart of America Agricultural Hemp Classic is being held on January 15th and 16th at the Stoney Creek Hotel and Conference Center in Independence, Missouri. The conference is free for MHA members. For non-members, registration is $150 until January 10th. After that date, the registration fee will increase to $200.

Learn more about the conference in this interview with Missouri Hemp Association executive director Bill Cook.

Interview with Bill Cook, Missouri Hemp Association
Audio, Cannabis, Farming, hemp

AEM to Sponsor Workshop for NAMA 2020

Cindy Zimmerman

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) and the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) are teaming up during NAMA’s 2020 Agri-Marketing Conference for a pre-conference workshop with content targeted specifically for small and medium-sized companies.

2020 Agri-Marketing Conference
The event, Equipping Your Small Marketing Department to Survive and Thrive, will be emceed by Curt Blades, Senior Vice President of Ag Services at AEM, and will include three sessions:

Media Strategies for (Almost) Every Budget with Pat Reese of Rooster Strategic Solutions, this session will help small and medium-sized companies determine media priorities, become better advertising space buyers, measure success, and dig into digital.

A panel discussion with marketing pros, including Jesse Cler of CHS Inc, Dave Patterson of Krone NA, and Jennifer Todd of Empire Cat, a multi-state ag and construction equipment dealership. They’ll explore timely topics like utilizing co-op funds, earning media coverage, and discussing how to localize a national brand. The panel will be moderated by Sara Steever, President of Poulsen.

The final session is a Best Practices Roundtable, drawing on the experience of all participants in working with social media, direct marketing, media strategies and much more.

The National Agri-Marketing Association is headed to San Diego, CA, for the 2020 Agri-Marketing Conference on April 15-17. The pre-conference workshop will be held Wednesday, April 15 from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m.

Learn more about the preconference workshop and AEM’s support of NAMA in this interview with Curt Blades.
Curt Blades, AEM Senior VP of Ag Services, on NAMA partnership (5:15)

AEM, Agribusiness, Audio, NAMA

Zimfo Bytes 1/3

Carrie Muehling

  • MN AG EXPO, hosted by Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, will be held Jan. 22-23, 2020, at the Mankato Civic Center (formerly the Verizon Center) in Mankato, Minn.
  • The Center for Food Integrity’s digital ethnography report, which uses a research tool that analyzes millions of conversations online in real time, shows that while the climate change debate is only expected to grow 3.6 percent in the next two years, the conversation on causes is expected to grow 260 percent and solutions 202 percent. The heated dialogue is now focused on “what’s next.”
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture is recruiting interested U.S. exporters for its first 2020 trade mission, which will take place in Casablanca, Morocco, March 16-19. The mission will focus on boosting U.S. agricultural exports to all of North Africa and will include interested buyers not just from Morocco, but from Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia as well.
  • MGEX, a Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization, reports 2019 concluded as the second-best calendar year in history with a total of 2,357,996 contracts traded. Accompanied by this achievement, it was also the second-best calendar year for electronic volume with a total of 2,075,531 contracts.
  • U.S. Wheat Associates welcomes a new colleague to its Headquarters Office in Arlington, Va. Shelbi Knisley joined the organization January 1, 2020, as Director of Policy. USW represents the interests of U.S. wheat farmers in export markets.
Zimfo Bytes

Precision Ag Bytes 1/2

Carrie Muehling

  • American Vanguard Corporation announced the acquisition of four herbicide brands from Corteva Agriscience. These products are complementary tank-mix partners for a variety of primary herbicides used in the U.S agricultural market.
  • BRANDT has helped another grower set a new world yield record this year. David Hula’s corn yield was recorded at 616 bushels per acre as part of the 2019 National Corn Grower Association’s national corn yield contest. Hula used BRANDT EnzUp® and BRANDT Smart System® foliar nutrients on the record winning plots.
  • Farmers who planted Pioneer® brand corn products won 10 national and 245 state awards in the annual National Corn Growers Association Corn Yield Contest. This is the third year in a row that a Pioneer product has taken top yield in the contest while setting two world records in the process.
  • There is a lot to celebrate about 2019 for Vinduino. Here’s a recap the major awards won during 2019 by Vinduino for their Crop Optimization Technology™: 2019 World Ag Expo Top 10 New Product Award; 2019 American Farm Bureau Federation Top 10 Innovator; and 2019 IoT World Cup Finalist.
  • Pioneer® brand sorghum hybrids continued their commanding performance in the National Sorghum Producers Yield Contest. Farmers who grew Pioneer brand sorghum represented 88% of all national first-, second- and third-place winners and earned 6 of 9 first-place national honors in the 2019 contest.
  • Calyxt, Inc. has entered into a collaboration with Central Valley Ag cooperative to expand Calyxt’s Identity Preserved grower network for Calyxt crop varieties.
AgWired Precision, Precision Ag Bytes

Ethanol Report on 2019

Cindy Zimmerman

No one in the ethanol industry will be sorry to see 2019 in the rear view mirror. To say it has been a rough year would be an understatement. Renewable Fuels Association president and CEO Geoff Cooper says it was one of the worst years – if not the worst – the industry has seen in its relatively short history.

The best news of 2019 came at the beginning of June with the approval of year round E15 and President Trump’s visit to an Iowa ethanol plant. Besides that, in addition to weather woes and trade wars, the bad news of the year centered around the impact of small refinery exemptions on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a battle between the industry and EPA that just culminated this week in a rule that Cooper says fails to deliver on President Trump’s commitment to farmers and producers.

In this edition of the Ethanol Report, Cooper takes a look back at 2019 for one last time before focusing forward on the future.

Ethanol Report on 2019 (17:50)

The Ethanol Report is a podcast about the latest news and information in the ethanol industry that has been sponsored by the Renewable Fuels Association since 2009. Click here to subscribe.

Audio, Ethanol, RFA