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Content about John Blue

November 11, 2011
Antibiotics in Food Animals

How will the future of antibiotics in food animals be impacted?

What are the issues of using antibiotics in food animals? How will their use impact consumers? What are some of the scientific studies saying? These reference links are only a starting reference point to help understand the issues and form an opinion on actions to take.

November 3, 2011
Shout Your Agriculture Story From The Barn Tops!

The number of people involved with production agriculture in the USA is about 2% of the population. The other 98% of Americans have a connection to food but few have a connection to agriculture. So how can farmers and ranchers build a greater awareness for what they do?

We received a note from a reader on a post about Jeff Simmons (President of Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly and Company) sharing how Elanco sales teams felt working in the animal agriculture industry (http://agtoday.us/o9s5gU ). The person worked in the poultry industry in Arkansas and felt "very little positive information is being illustrated by the media" about his industry. He highlighted many of the valued activities the poultry industry does and told of the positive efforts to continuously improve the industry.

September 20, 2011
Food and Ag

How are food and agriculture related?

Food and agriculture are related, it just takes many steps to get from farm to plate. These links are just a small representation of ag products on their journey to the grocery store.

September 20, 2011
Food Traceability

Resources to help discover food traceability issues.

Food traceability systems and processes are key to handling food borne illnesses.

August 15, 2011
Ag Econ 101

The economics of agriculture is core to functioning societies. The ability to understand crop growth, trade functions, and identify trends is important to the billions of people that depend of food every day. These resources are good starting points to understand economics and how to apply it to agriculture.

July 15, 2011
Food, People, and 2050

9.8 billion people by 2050 will require 2.3 billion metric tons of food per year. How can this be supported?

The population continues to increase to levels that concern those that grow and produce food. Many believe there is a need to develop technologies that will increase food production at least by 50% to support the expected population of 2050 (9.8 billion by some estimates). While there is general agreement that the population will increase and that access to food will be an issue, there is no definitive solution.

February 22, 2011
Food Safety Information and Resources

How do you find out what food products are being recalled? How can you learn more about safe food preparation?

While no one wants to get sick from eating food, there are times when this will occur. These resources can help learn more about safely preparing food, what foods are being recalled, and what some of the issues are within the food safety industry.

January 13, 2011
Agriculture Calculator Apps

How much product to water do you need to cover a specific acreage? These agri-calculator apps can help save time.

Agri-production managers and staff often need to do a calculation while in the field or on the run. These are a sample of some of the smart phone tools available to help make decisions without having to head back to the home office.

January 13, 2011
Agriculture Crowdsourcing

Smart phones, as data collection devices, provide a channel back to research labs, helping improve the analysis and understanding of the data.

Smart phones are a unique tool for those doing research and are in need of field data collection. These sample apps use the smart phone and crowdsourcing to bring data from the field into a lab database. These apps help anyone with an interest in the science to report back observations and sightings of environmental or disease issues. The labs are able to expand their reach in terms of data collection and offer back to others the data for land or operation management decision making.

January 13, 2011
Agriculture Information Resource Apps

Sometimes you just want to look something up. These apps offer specialized dictionaries or databases for niche information areas in agriculture.

These are a collection of specialized smart phone agriculture apps. These types of apps are primarily used as a lookup tool, either to help identify species, review a piece of regulation, or get the specifics on an issue.

January 13, 2011
Agriculture Management Information Apps

Specialized apps provide an extension to farm management information systems, allowing for reporting while traveling.

While these apps might be free, some of information that drives the application may not be. These types of applications are mostly mobile extensions of a farm or operation management system. They allow for management and production staff to see how operations are working while on the road.

January 13, 2011
Agriculture News Apps

A sample of agriculture focused news applications. Most are actual applications while Syngenta Farm Mobile is a web site whose content is mobile focused. More smart phone agriculture news applications available.

January 13, 2011
Weather Apps

Weather is of interest to everyone and for everyone there is a weather app to suit their need.

This is a sample of smart phone weather applications. This is one application area where there are many variations on the weather theme. Apple has a dedicated weather application page and the Android Market Place offers a similar set of applications.

January 12, 2011
General News Services Apps

What are some of the major news providers offering to mobile users?

This is just a sample of the news services that offer their information through a mobile application or a mobile focused web page.

January 10, 2011
Genetically Modified Organisms

Are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) misunderstood by the public because of the images used to inform? These resources should help provide some insight on genetically modified organisms and what some of the science entails.

January 5, 2011
This Week In Ag 0022 - What Are Rural Businesses?

What opportunities are there for rural businesses?

Show notes

What are rural businesses?

  • What does a rural business looks like?
  • Are farms considered rural businesses?
  • What issues face rural businesses?
  • What are some ideas for farm / ranch business operations to think about in next 18 months?
  • Information sharing, communications, marketing, etc in rural businesses ... What does that look like? 

What is you website pick of the week? What information do we all need to know about, use, share, rave about?!?

December 13, 2010
Discovering Ethanol

Ethanol is consider by some to be the path to U.S. energy independence while others say it is only a stop gap at best. These links offer a starting point to learning more.

Ethanol as an energy source has lots of sides, politically, economically, and socially. These links only offer a starting point to discovering more about ethanol.

November 4, 2010
This Week In Ag 0018 - What Does Ag Policy Look Like Post Election?

The 2010 elections are over and January will bring new legislators. What ag policies will be affected or what impacts on ag could the 112th US Congress impose?

Show notes

  • Post elections ag policy outlook
    • Estate taxes, environmental regulations, land use?
    • The 2012 Farm Bill will continue its development in 2011. What will that look like?
  • Swine industry in current economy.
    • Highlights from Swine conferences?
    • "corn would be a whole lot more affordable for the swine industry if every pound of pork had a 46-cent tax credit, similar to ethanol", comments?
    • Does more consolidation need to occur?
November 2, 2010
What is in store for the 2012 Farm Bill?

The 2010 Farm Bill outcomes are still in the "distant" future. But the elections this year and next will play a major part in what is in or out of the bill.

How will the 2010 election affect the discussions on the 2012 Farm Bill? No one knows definitively. However, the following links may provide some indicators and information to help understand the issues and concerns.

October 22, 2010
Data Anlayis Tools and Resources

How do you quickly pull data, organize it, and then make sense of it all?

Too much data, not enough understanding. How do you quickly pull data, organize it, and then make sense of it all? Several tools and articles are available to help.

August 13, 2010
This Week In Ag 0011 - 2010 Ag Media Summit Wrap-up, Agriculture + Advocacy = Agvocacy 2.0 Training

Observation on the Ag Media Summit and what one might expect at the Agvocacy 2.0 Training Conference.

Show notes

  • Ag Media Summit wrap up.
    • What was compelling to hear/see/watch?
    • What are ag media practitioners feeling in this day of digital media?
    • How should ag media change to meet the future?
    • What is the future of ag media?
    • What are some tools ag media needs to pick up/use?
    • What are ag media consumers doing differently?
July 29, 2010
How Do I Find Partners and Businesses Resources?

Web tools can help improve your ability to find a contact at other companies.

Looking for specific businesses or contacts within a company? Using tools like Manta.com or LinkedIn can help improve your chances of making a connection.

July 29, 2010
Specialized Digital Research Tools

The internet has many deep sources of data and there are tools that can help you get there.

Like many people, Google, Yahoo!, or Bing are the first places you start a search. Using one of these sites is ingrained into our day to day activities. While these sites are excellent starting points, they are not the only places from which to discover information.

July 23, 2010
World Agriculture Information Research Tools

Looking for ag data can seem daunting. Use these web sites and the power of Google to speed up the search and reduce the hassle.

When looking for information on world agriculture, where do you start? The following websites are good starting points. They are not all encompassing but they will get you started.

Use the power of Google Search. For example Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ corn site:fao.org ] will return pages about corn but only from fao.org.

July 15, 2010
Ag Career and Job Search Tools

Where can I start my ag career and job search?

These are stating points for discovering and researching agricultural jobs and careers.