Latest News From Margy Eckelkamp

David Muth of Peoples Company Capital Markets, the Investment platform for Peoples Company, shares how institutional investors have reacted to higher interest rates on their land investments pursuits.

Dr. Vince Malanga shares insights on the U.S. economic outlook, and what areas demand the most attention.

To bring new ways to connect its agronomy insights with customers, Growmark and 29 of its member FS companies are launching the myFS Agronomy app in conjunction with Intelinair.

Farmer and philanthropist Howard Buffett held a fireside chat during the 2024 Top Producer Summit to share his experiences visiting the front line of Ukraine over the past two years.

Vanessa O'Brien shares the similar traits held by both farmers and explorers: courage, endurance, resilience and dedication.

Quickshot is Helena’s newest entrant in the field, which provides seed fluency in addition to crop nutrient package. For 2024, it’s available in limited quantities.

After launching an initial “frontrunner” a group in Illinois, Bayer says its Crop Science division is ready to roll out the company’s new operating model, Dynamic Shared Ownership (as it’s known internally, DSO).

“We are talking about fuel produced in 2025, but that is going to use the crop we are growing this year,” Mitchell Hora says.

“We are really in a second phase of ag tech,” says Ryan Raguse, co-founder of Bushel. “We aren’t in an overly mature state—we’re still somewhere in the middle ground."

“We are a high-impact, mission-driven, life-science company with three strong businesses, but we have four challenges that urgently must be addressed,” said Bill Anderson.

This is a new seed lubricity agent applied at plant as a talc/graphite replacement which also provides a micronutrient package (5% phosphate, 1% iron, 3% mnagenses, 2.5% molybendum, 10.5% zinc.)

“Our mission is to improve and expand our program to create additional opportunities for even more American farmers,” said Leonardo Bastos, Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Services at Bayer Crop Science.

Benefits include reducing crop residue build-up on the soil surface, resulting in improved planting, seed placement, and germination.

The company sees this new formulation as a potential replacement for liquid seed treatment. 

The company says its year-over-year growth includes more farmers paid (215% increase in new growers), more fields enrolled (333% more new acres and a 297% increase in new fields) and more credits produced each year. 

To date, tens of thousands of acres have been planted with SIMPAS-Applied Solutions (SaS) through the SIMPAS application system.

The team at Traction Ag is working to provide via its cloud-based farm accounting application a system that captures all the financial and field information farmers need to record and manage.

As previously reported, FBN’s board had launched a search for the next CEO for the company.

“We’re living in a world where it’s just a matter of time,” Harlan Asmus says referencing the development of resistance.

Dynamic Shared Ownership reduces the layers and brings the business management closer to the customer.

The program is structured so farmer users of Pivot Bio Proven 40 can participate in annual carbon insetting partnerships as a result of their change in practice.

On February 14, the EPA issued an existing stocks order for dicamba products previously registered for over-the-top use.

“It’s hard to put yourself in growth mode when things are getting so expensive,” says Tanner Ehmke with CoBank.

No step is too big for Top Producer finalist, PJ Haynie. Deep family roots are the foundation of his farming legacy. 

This roundup of almost two dozen product combinations gives details on dry formulations meant for use in corn or soybeans that replace or layer with the same company’s traditional seed fluency blends.

On Monday, February 5 the news of Bill Northey’s passing quickly spread through the agriculture industry, of which he dedicated his professional life to serving.

“We can move so much faster. By our estimates, less than 2% of farmers are participating in these programs industry wide,” Truterra president Jamie Leifker says.

With recent turnover in company leadership, a divestment in its insurance business, and a growing list of partnerships, FBN is re-focusing its business. 

“Our goal is simple: use traits to help plants grow deeper roots,” says Cquesta CEO Michael Ott.

Use the topics and tools included in The DIRTT Project to jump-start the succession planning process for your operation whether you are just beginning or need to get on track.

Myron Stine says Stine Seed is celebrating its 45-year history with a keen eye on the future.

Wendy Mosher, CEO at New West Genetics and vice president of Hemp Feed Coalition, says this is something that has been in the works for at least four years

In 2024, the company, which started in Australia in crops such as barley and canola, is offering its product for use on soybean acres in six states: MN, SD, ND, WI, NE and IA. 

Vikram Luthar’s leave is pending an ongoing investigation being conducted by outside counsel for ADM and the Board’s Audit Committee.

We asked seven commodity market analysts to give commodity market outlooks for 2024 With their insights, the bearish market conditions will carry over, with a slightly more optimistic outlook for soybeans over corn.

What was once known as FBN Insurance will now be known as Momentum Ag and part of Patriot Growth Services.

With an enterprise mindset, MKC walks with its farmer-customers.

What this means or could amount to is being left as fairly ambiguous.

On the heels of launching the CR11 combine at Agritechnica 2023, Carlo Lambro gave Farm Journal a one-on-one interview to talk about the brand’s global footprint, its focus in North America and the future of New Holland

In two years, Truterra has paid farmers more than $9 million for more than 462,000 metric tons of carbon benefits.

Dean Banks will join Flagship Pioneering as CEO-Partner and CEO of Indigo Ag; most recently, Banks was the former President and CEO of Tyson Foods.

The 2024 Top Producer Summit is Feb. 5 to 7 in Kansas City, Mo.

Founded in 1962, Ramco Innovations has become a leading distributor of automation products across the Midwest. It has 65 employees, which will transition to the new entity. 

From 2020 with only a few farmers participating to covering millions of acres in 2023, Taranis says it wants to help retailers and farmers understand every decision with analytics via its AcreForward technologies.

RhizoSorb is being marketed at MAP 2.0

The report shares markets are at a crossroads—prices could move in either direction.

“In this market, there's a lot of risk from the farm gates to the retail side. So more conversation goes along way this year,” Josh Linville says. 

We asked some of our previous Top Producer of the Year awardees to share a bit about what’s happening on their farming operations — looking at both the past year and out on the horizon.

InnerSoy is genetically engineered to omit signals when stressed, which are detectable from as far away as space. The company says its products can show stress signals two weeks before current detection methods.

As a leading company in seed research and production, Brian Barker joined the AgReliant Genetics team as CEO and president mid-2023.