After a nice quiet holiday season, ZimmComm immediately got back on the road with the new year.
We started out the month in “Icelanta” covering both the second AG CONNECT Expo and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) annual meeting. The weather was okay for the first couple of days, but on the first day of the AFBF meeting we saw five inches of snow and ice hit the southern city with only six snow plows! It was an experience we will not soon forget. Farm Bureau has never had a meeting like it!
Besides the snow and ice, the highlights of the meetings included being part of a really great show for AG CONNECT with lots of content that we are still using on all of our on-line publications – and meeting Mike “Dirty Jobs” Rowe. He is really a great advocate for agriculture.
Check out the coverage of AFBF on Agwired here and all the stories from AG CONNECT Expo here.
We had the opportunity to welcome a new sponsor for Agwired and Precision Pays during the month of January – GROWMARK and their FS Green Plan Solutions. Chuck visited ?GROWMARK headquarters in Bloomington and Cindy attended a conference on the company’s “Pursuit of Maximum Yields” program in East Peoria. Look forward to learning lots more about this regional cooperative that started in 1927 and provides agriculture-related products and services, as well as grain marketing in the Midwest and Ontario, Canada.
At the end of the month, Chuck headed back to Atlanta for the International Poultry Expo, with coverage sponsored by our friends at Novus International. This is the third year in a row that we have covered this event for them and once again they featured a well-known sports figure at their exhibit. This time it was a football theme with NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkus. The weather was much better this time!
While Chuck headed south, Cindy went north to Des Moines to attend the 5th annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit for the first time to enjoy a fantastic program that included two potential presidential candidates – Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum. The great event was made possible by sponsorships from Domestic Fuel supporters Growth Energy and the Renewable Fuels Association.
We are supposed to get back on the road this week, heading to Denver for the Cattle Industry Annual Convention and NCBA Trade Show, but that will depend on the weather as the forecast is calling for a major snowstorm. We’ll get there at some point to start off another big month of travel in February. Joanna is in Des Moines for the Iowa Power Farm Show this week and Chuck is scheduled to head directly from Denver to Phoenix for the National Biodiesel Conference. Later in the month, we’ll be at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, the National Ethanol Conference in Phoenix, the Agricultural Relations Council meeting in Naples (yeah!) and the Western Farm Show in Kansas City. Praying for better weather everywhere and hope to see you all down the road!
