Missouri Farmers & Ranchers Say Thank You

Jamie Johansen August 6, 2014

I have always taken pride in my ability to cast a vote, but this year it fell really close to home. As a Missouri farmer, I sat on pins and needles last night as I watched the votes come. I could not be more proud of my state’s ability to rally together and stand strong against those whose goals aim to not only hurt the agricultural community, but actually end it. There are talks of a recount, but I am confident that the majority have spoken and our Right to Farm will continue for many generations to come.

Yesterday Missouri voters approved Amendment #1, the Missouri Farming Rights Amendment with over 50% of voters casting a ‘yes’ ballot. With Amendment #1 now enshrined in the state constitution, all Missouri farmers and ranchers now enjoy constitutional protections to their livelihoods.

“This was a difficult campaign but we made our case to voters and we appreciate the support that Missourians have shown for family farmers and ranchers across the state,” Missouri Farmers Care Chairman Don Nikodim said. “While it is unfortunate that the ‘no’ campaign chose to confuse voters with false attacks on Amendment #1, voters ultimately saw that Amendment #1 was supported by farmers and ranchers across the state. With Amendment #1 approved, we look forward to continue communicating the importance of agriculture to all Missourians.

Missouri Farmers Care will now prepare for the automatic recount, triggered by the margin of victory being less than 1%. We are confident that the will of the people has been shown and believe that a recount will only reaffirm the victory that farmers and ranchers have won.”

Ag Groups, Farming

Inside the New Holland CR Cab

Chuck Zimmerman August 6, 2014

Yesterday I showed you the New Holland CR10.90 Combine. Today we take a look inside via ZimmGlass. During the New Holland Media Day I jumped into the cab of a CR combine driven by Brian Faulk who took me on a ride and described the new cab design. It is comfortable!

The first feeling I had was of being suspended above the machine in a glass bubble. There’s more than 62.3 square feet of glass on this combine which gives the operator a significant amount of visibility including down onto the header that’s in use. You can work with two different displays if you’d like. It comes with an Intelliview IV color display. I like the electric cooler that’s built under the buddy seat! I’m going to stop here and let Brian explain the rest in the video.

Listen to Brian’s presentation here: Inside the New Holland CR Cab

2014 New Holland Media Day Photo Album

Agribusiness, Audio, New Holland, Video

Nicole Price Shares Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace

Joanna Schroeder August 6, 2014

Nicole Price’s performance is being measured by her firm, Cy Wakeman, on how much her social media profile improves. Somewhat interesting as she came to Minneapolis, MN yesterday and gave a presentation focused on “Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace” to a full house during the AgCareers.com HR & Food Roundtable about a new performance metric for quantifying employee value to the organization. And this metric is not your social media profile. (Follow Nicole on Twitter @NicoleatCWI.)

Price explained to attendees that there are three different types of employees, resistant, maintenance and innovators. There were several things her firm noticed during their research that are very interesting: in high performing organizations most people who did everything they were charged with were rated as average; and leaders overrate because we use performance measures as a motivational tool. And guess what? This doesn’t work.

Organizations need new engagement strategies and accountability. She stressed that organizations need to stop spending time on poor performers and spent more time talking to high performers.

Their research identified 5 New Rules of the Workplace:

Rule 1: Your level of accountability determines your level of happiness so don’t hope to be lucky, choose to be happy.
Rule 2: Suffering is optional so ditch the drama.
Rule 3: Buy-in is not optional; it’s your action, not your opinion that adds value.
Rule 4: Say yes to what’s next – because change is opportunity.
Rule 5: You will always have extenuating circumstances so succeed anyway.

Nicole Price speaks in more detail about these rules and how to put them in action in my interview. First, here is a closing thought on change from Price. Change is hard for the unready. Most leaders spend a lot of time with people in resistance; yet there is very little chance you can change them. Leaders can’t really spend time with those employees with vision either. The time should be spent with those in maintenance. These people get the least amount of attention but have the most ability to change.

Learn more in my interview with Nicole Price: Nicole Price Interview

View the 2014 AgCareers.com HR & Food Roundtable photo album.

AgCareers, Audio, Education, Events

C’mon Let’s Ditch the Rule, Okay?

Chuck Zimmerman August 6, 2014

American Farm Bureau Federation has just published an animated video that helps describe what this whole Ditch the Rule campaign is all about. The two-and-a-half minute movie explores how EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ proposed “Waters of the U.S.” rule is regulatory overreach and unnecessary.

“This video offers a fresh take on a serious subject of concern to farmers, ranchers and other landowners,” said Mace Thornton, AFBF’s executive director of communications. “It is time to get animated, share the video and join the movement to Ditch The Rule.”

If adopted, the proposed rule would enable the agencies to micro-manage farming and impose unworkable regulations on farmers and other landowners. It would grant federal agencies – EPA and the Corps – rather than state and local governing bodies, primary oversight of land use, exposing farmers to penalties for common farming practices of up to $37,000 per day.

AFBF, Ag Groups, Video

NCBA’s Update From Washington

Jamie Johansen August 6, 2014

NCBA’s Director of Legislative Affairs, Kristina Butts, was on-hand during last week’s Cattle Industry’s Summer Conference to update producers on current and future issues the Washington office is tackling.

“Washington is always an interesting place in a midterm election year. The one thing NCBA is really focused our efforts on this year is more on the regulatory side of a lot of these proposed rules moving forward out of agencies like the USDA and EPA.”

“Obviously talking about EPA I would be remised if I didn’t talk about their proposed rule on Waters of the United States. This is the largest federal land grab in our country’s history. Anybody that owns land will need to be aware about what this proposed rules means to them and their families operation.”

The EPA was present for last week’s summer meeting to continue the discussion and dialogue with producers in attendance. Kristina voiced the importance of the EPA hearing from the grassroots. The EPA’s proposed rule would remove the word navigable from the Clean Water Act that was put into place by Congress in the 70’s. Kristina goes on to further dissect and explain why we need to all participate in the comment period telling the EPA to ‘Ditch the Rule’.

Other issues NCBA’s Legislative Affairs Director mentioned were trade regulations, Country of Origin Labeling and what the forcast looked like for the upcoming fiscal year 2015.

Listen to my interview with Kristina here: Interview with Kristina Butts, Executive Director, Legislative Affairs, NCBA

View and download photos from the event here: Cattle Industry Summer Conference Photo Album

Coverage of the Cattle Industry Summer Conference is sponsored by

Ag Groups, Audio, Beef, Cattle Industry Conference, NCBA

FMC “Stand & Be Heard Anthem Singing Contest” Finalists

Jamie Johansen August 6, 2014

After one round of online voting and review from a panel of judges, the 2014 FMC “Stand & Be Heard Anthem Singing Contest” finalists have been named. Halle Reid, Jessica Ronat, Leanna Crawford and Lindsay Webber have been selected to compete in the final phase of this year’s contest.

“This year’s finalists not only display strong musical talents but they are truly the future of our industry,” said Matt Hancock, FMC Agricultural Solutions North America corn segment manager.

The four finalists now will travel to Nashville to take part in a professional recording experience at the House of Blues Studio. Finalist performances will be posted to the contest website and broadcast nationwide on August 28 on RFD-TV. The finalist voting round will begin online Aug. 28 through September 18 to determine a grand prize winner, who will receive a $10,000 scholarship. The three remaining finalists will receive $5,000 scholarships. Winner announcements will be made on Sept. 22.

“Our five judges – Country Music Producer Tom Davis, Singer/Songwriter Caylee Anna, National FFA Chorus Director Patti LaJoye, 2013 Anthem Contest Winner Noelle Goodson and National Agri-Marketing Association President Kenna Rathai – had the difficult task of selecting this year’s four finalists,” said Hancock. “With so much talent, Halle, Jessica, Leanna and Lindsay are excited to continue on in the contest, but we are even more excited to continue this scholarship opportunity for young students.”

Agribusiness, FMC

AgCareers.com HR & Food Roundtable Welcomes Full House

Joanna Schroeder August 5, 2014

The annual AgCareers.com HR & Food Roundtable welcomed a full house this afternoon with record breaking attendance nearing 230 people. The largest event dedicated to human resource professionals recruiting for the agricultural and food industries, this year boasted 70 first timers, 115 different ag companies were represented and 34 different universities and associations were represented.

I had the opportunity to speak with Spell, president of AgCareers.com, about this year’s event and I asked him why this event keeps growing each year. He said that it’s because they work hard to bring out of the box thinking to the attendees through the speakers, workshops and networking events. However, he cautioned that they would like to keep the event intimate and would prefer to limit the growth to 250 people to keep the level of participation at its highest and most effective level.

To kick off the opening session, Spell, gave the attendees some updates on the organization’s major efforts. For example, Spell noted that this year they have 7 percent more jobs on the website in 2014 than in 2013 for the same time period. In addition, there has been an 11 percent increase in applicants, or close to 90,000 applicants applied for jobs on the AgCareers.com website this year to date with 12,000 applications per month. This, said Spell, is a 9,000 net increase in new applicants through the end of July and they are continuing to work hard to continue increasing this number. AgCareers.com also has seen a major increase in its social media presence. Snell said there have nearly 23,000 followers on various social media sites.

Snell also shared a few other key accomplishments in the past year:

The AgCareers.com annual salary survey has 75,000 employees represented in CDR. This goes beyond salary and in to benefits and perks as well. There are 11,000 participants in Canada across the industry as well.
More than 100 ag companies have participated so far this year in their HR review.
The AgWarriors program now has over 600 resumes from individuals who have served in the military.

I asked Spell what was next for the organization. He highlighted several great initiatives that will launch later this year or early in 2015. For example, they will be refreshing the site and with the new look will come new communities targeting passive talent, those not actively looking for new jobs but would consider a new opportunity, as well as a space for people in the consultant world.

To learn more, stay tuned for more stories from the event. Also, get the recap of last year’s successes and this year’s upcoming initiatives by listening to Eric Spell’s interview here: Eric Spell Interview

View the 2014 AgCareers.com HR & Food Roundtable photo album.

AgCareers, Agribusiness, Audio, Education, Events

New AAEA President Kurt Lawton

Chuck Zimmerman August 5, 2014

The gavel has been passed for the American Agricultural Editors Association. Holly Spangler passed it to Kurt Lawton, Corn & Soybean Digest. Kurt also made a nice memento presentation to Holly. BTW. Kurt was one of the first editors of what is now our Precision.AgWired.com website!

After business was taken care of during last week’s Ag Media Summit I talked with Kurt to see what he’s looking forward to working on with AAEA in the coming year. Kurt will be a great leader I’m sure. For one thing he has been a member under all the main categories of membership and can draw on that experience. Looking ahead, he sees AAEA taking a look at the strategic plan and figuring out how the leaders can make it an even better organization.

Kurt has also attended an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress and urges AAEA members to take advantage of the opportunity.

You can listen to my interview with Kurt here: Interview with Kurt Lawton

Ag Media Summit Photo Album

Coverage of the Ag Media Summit is sponsored by

ACN, Ag Media Summit, Audio, IFAJ, Media

Old and New LPC Presidents

Chuck Zimmerman August 5, 2014

Christy Lee, Cee Lee Photography, is now the past President of the Livestock Publications Council and Don Norton, Boelte-Hall, in the new Prez. After the LPC business meeting I visited with them to learn how the organization is doing and what the priorities are for the new year.

Christy says it has been a great year for LPC with a highlight being the start of an internship program. Membership continues to grow and there are four new members on the board.

Don talks about a new event that LPC is planning this fall called Visions 2014 on November 11 in Kansas City, the night before the NAFB convention starts. It will start with a newsmaker event and panel discussion on animal welfare. Then there will be a dinner and some social time.

You can listen to my interview with Christy and Don here: Interview with LPC Presidents

Ag Media Summit Photo Album

Coverage of the Ag Media Summit is sponsored by

Ag Media Summit, Audio, LPC

New Holland CR10.90 via ZimmGlass

Chuck Zimmerman August 5, 2014

Introducing the first and only New Holland CR10.90 combine in North America. For the moment anyway. This bad boy will be on display at shows like Farm Progress. It is a monster of a machine. This one was on display for ag media with a draper head.

Telling us all about it is Nigel Mackenzie and he gets very whomped up when it comes to these machines. I put ZimmGlass through a workout during last week’s New Holland Media Day. This was my first video of the day and I’ve got more to come, including riding around a track in a new combine. I recently spoke to Nigel about the combine launch by phone. The media day gave me an opportunity to see it up close and personal. Here’s a little information about the new products.

New Holland has just upped the stakes for harvesting ease and capacity with the all-new CR Series combines—the most powerful Twin Rotor™ combines ever. Six models range from 401 to 652 maximum engine horsepower. All feature fuel-efficient ECOBlue™ HI-eSCR engines which are Tier 4B compliant. The flagship CR10.90 boasts the Diesel Engine of the Year 2014 which delivers epic power and in-field response. The new Dynamic Feed Roll™ system—the on-the-go, no-interruption stone trap—increases capacity by accelerating crop into the rotors.

To learn more about the new CR combines, especially the CR10.90 listen in or watch Nigel tell us all about it.

Listen to Nigel’s presentation here: New Holland CR10.90

2014 New Holland Media Day Photo Album

Agribusiness, Audio, New Holland, Video

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