2025 Tech Hub Live

Zimfo Bytes 12/8

Carrie Muehling

    • MGEX, a Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), has recorded the second-highest monthly exchange volume number for November with 245,980 contracts. This number is also 9% greater than last year’s November total.
    • Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has announced the appointment of five members to serve on the United Sorghum Checkoff Program Board. The United Sorghum Checkoff Program is comprised of 13 U.S. sorghum farmers.  Membership includes five seats for the largest production state (Kansas), three seats for the second largest production state (Texas) and one seat for the third largest production state (Oklahoma).
    • Land O’Lakes, Inc. has announced the promotions of Beth Ford and Brad Oelmann.  Beth Ford will head all Land O’Lakes Businesses and Brad Oelmann will head all Land O’Lakes Services. Both promotions are effective Jan. 1, 2018.

     

Zimfo Bytes

Bayer Helps Fund ASTA Communications Efforts

Cindy Zimmerman

The American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) unveiled a new video at the CSS 2017 & Seed Expo to help explain plant breeding innovations in a brief and entertaining way.

The video is one of the communications efforts that ASTA partner Bayer has helped to support. Bayer seed traits and seed treatments management lead Brad May, who serves on the ASTA board, says they are really excited about the new video. “It’s more of a story, the history of how food was developed and what the future holds,” said May. “I think it will really help tell the story of what we do.”

Learn more in this interview and watch the video below: Interview with Brad May, Bayer

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album

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ASTA, Audio, Bayer, Video

Digital Ag and Big Data

Cindy Zimmerman

As our digital world expands in agriculture, big data keeps getting bigger and making a bigger difference in how farmers make decisions.

Digital Agriculture: Big Data was a session this week at the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) CSS 2017 & Seed Expo. University of Wisconsin agronomy professor Shawn Conley moderated the session which included presentations from:

Paul Schrimpf
Meister Media Worldwide

John Fulton, associate professor
The Ohio State University

Ariel Zajdband, head of product
Mavrx

Jeremy Wilson, farmer
Crop IMS LLC

Listen to the session here: ASTA CSS Digital Ag, Big Data session

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album

AgWired Precision, ASTA, Audio, data, Precision Agriculture, Seed

John Deere Connect Support Tool Receives Award

Carrie Muehling

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) recently honored John Deere Connected Support – Expert Alerts with its AE50 Award for 2018. Expert Alerts helps producers to minimize downtime during their busiest seasons by predicting service needs and reducing diagnostic time using JDLink machine connectivity and data analytics. Customers and dealers can reduce service costs and experience fewer service interruptions when they use this technology.

“Expert Alerts provides remote machine monitoring and notification to John Deere dealers, which enables them to contact customers about an impending or potential issue, and often gives dealers solutions to resolve the issue,” said Jeremy Goebel, aftermarket product development manager for John Deere. “John Deere Connected Support tools enable dealers to proactively support customers, which results in customers experiencing less downtime, or sometimes avoid downtime altogether, leading to increased productivity and profitability.”

The AE50 award highlights the year’s most innovative designs in product engineering in the food and agriculture industry, as chosen by a panel of international engineering experts.

AgWired Precision, John Deere

FarmLead Launches GrainCents Advisory Service

Cindy Zimmerman

A new subscription service from FarmLead has been launched that can provides specific recommendations to farmers on when to sell, hold and/or hedge in various market conditions to improve balance sheets, operations, and grain marketing schedules.

The new service called GrainCents also educates farmers by providing expert insights on global market conditions and how they impact farm operations for specific crops.

GrainCents offers a cost-effective solution to make sense of what is really moving the markets for 12 crops grown in North America, including corn, soybeans, three wheat varieties, and canola. “Too often I hear about ‘just-in-time’ grain marketing; hoping and wishing for better prices,” FarmLead President & CEO Brennan Turner said. “We think that knowing the market you’re in, and the main factors influencing it, can generate a successful grain marketing plan.”

GrainCents is built on Turner’s accurate track record of 93% right calls of when to sell, hold or hedge grain over the past two years. The cost for the annual GrainCents subscription ranges from $250 to $450 per crop, and discounted packages for multiple crops are available.

For more information, visit: https://farmlead.com/graincents.

AgWired Precision, Grains, Markets

DuPont & Sumitomo’s Global Seed-Applied Tech Agreement

Jamie Johansen

DuPont and Sumitomo Chemical Company, Limited announced a global agreement to collaborate on the development, registration and commercialization of seed-applied technologies for use in key crops around the world.

DuPont and Sumitomo Chemical formed this collaboration out of a shared objective to accelerate development and commercialization of novel seed-applied technologies to improve early plant growth and yields. The global agreement leverages the strengths of both companies, combining the conventional chemical and biological pipeline from Sumitomo Chemical, with the advanced seed technology and development and commercialization capability of DuPont Crop Protection, a business unit of DowDuPont Agriculture Division.

Collaborations between DuPont and Sumitomo Chemical’s regional affiliate, Valent U.S.A. LLC., will focus on the North American region with potential expansion opportunities to multiple crop markets globally.

During the American Seed Trade Association’s (ASTA) CSS & Seed Expo a press conference was held where Meg Brodman, Valent; Trey Soud, marketing director, row crops, Valent; and Mick Messman, director, DuPont Seed Applied Technologies spoke on the announcement.

Listen here: Dupont/Sumitomo Press Conference

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album

Agribusiness, AgWired Precision, ASTA, Audio, Crop Science, Seed

2018 Agricultural Economy Themes

Jamie Johansen

A highlight for all who attended the American Seed Trade Association’s (ASTA) CSS & Seed Expo is an agricultural economy report from Dan Basse, AgResource. Back by popular demand, Basse took us through the 2018 economic themes he forecasts we will see in agriculture.

“Generally speaking, it looks to be another year like the last one. We are thinking farming can be somewhere around $58-59 billion for the year ahead. We say that because one of the things that will change this year will be the ARC payment. It will come down because we excluded 2012,” Basse said.

As we know, the farm bill is still being written so Basse said we could see some afterthoughts beyond 2019. However, the price of corn, soybeans and wheat won’t change much.

Trade continues to sit center-stage for agriculture and the seed industry is keeping their ear to the ground when it comes to NAFTA renegotiations. Basse said the two commodities that would be impacted the most would be corn and pork.

In preparation for the 2018 growing season, Basse said “I want farmers to think ahead to not only the crop they have in their bins but think ahead to 2018, 2019 corn and soybeans. We have profitable landscape prices to lock in going forward. We want farmers to think ahead particularly if there is a weather problem in South America and what they need to be doing in the marketplace for the next three years.”

Listen to our complete conversation as Basse summarizes his outlook for 2018. Interview with Dan Basse, AgResource
Dan Basse, Ag Resource, presentation

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album

ASTA, Audio, Seed

ASTA Announces Student Video Awards

Cindy Zimmerman

ASTA CEO Andy LaVigne; Katelyn Fritz; and Susan Chapman, Tri-Societies

The first-place winner of the first “Better Seed, Better Life” student video contest was awarded this week during the CSS 2017 & Seed Expo in Chicago.

Sponsored by the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA), the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB), and the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America (Tri-Societies), the contest asked graduate and undergraduate students focusing on plant-science disciplines to submit videos bringing plant breeding innovation to life.

The winning video was produced by Katelyn Fritz of Iowa State University. As a junior double majoring in Agronomy and Global Resource Systems with focus areas of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology as well as Central America, Katelyn is on an eight-month internship in Guatemala with a small NGO named Semilla Nueva that works to sustainably overcome chronic malnutrition in Guatemala through biofortified corn.

Learn more about her enthusiasm about life and seed in this interview: Interview with Katelyn Fritz, ASTA Better Seed Better Life video winner

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album


ASTA, Audio, Seed

Milk Gets A New Voice

Carrie Muehling

Edge is the new name for a large dairy cooperative formerly known as the Dairy Business Milk Marketing Cooperative. John Pagel is a Wisconsin dairy farmer currently serving as president of Edge.

“As we continued to grow, we could understand and see that we did not have what we believed was good, solid representation of federal issues in [Washington] D.C. And, as we continued to talk to our patrons and the issues and problems that they were having, we wanted to deliver more value to them as a coop,” said Pagel. “So, we are starting to focus and concentrate our efforts on being a stronger representative for our patrons in Washington, D.C.”

Pagel said priorities for the cooperative’s members heading into the new year include immigration, trade and the 2018 Farm Bill.

Listen to Jamie’s interview with John Pagel here: Interview with John Pagel, Edge

AgWired Animal, Audio, Dairy

ASTA CSS 2017 Attendance Strong

Cindy Zimmerman

The American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) is ushering in the holiday season in its traditional way – with the annual CSS & Seed Expo in Chicago.

ASTA president and CEO Andy LaVigne says turnout at the annual event that includes the industry’s biggest trade show is still very strong despite ongoing mergers and acquisitions. “We’ll probably have close to 2700 this year and a good international representation,” said LaVigne.

Because international trade is so important to the seed industry, ASTA is urging its members to members to take part in today’s social media campaign in favor of NAFTA. “Mexico and Canada are huge markets for U.S. grain farmers and our customers,” said LaVigne, so it is important for the industry to make its voice heard loud and clear at the White House.

NAFTA Grassroots Day today encourages farmers and others in the industry to share their stories about the importance of NAFTA using #Farmers4NAFTA and #JustGrowIt and tagging @WhiteHouse

LaVigne has more information in this interview: Interview with ASTA CEO Andy LaVigne

2017 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo photo album

AgWired Precision, ASTA, Audio, Seed, Trade