Zimmcast

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I'm Chuck Zimmerman. In this episode you'll learn all about Farm Journal's new Ad Insights tool which is new to the agrimarketing industry. It's a first for a digital advertising analytics solution. Talking with me is Prescott Shibles, Farm Journal CEO. So, let's get started with some questions. You can find more online at the Farm Journal website. So that's the ZimmCast for now. If you have some exciting news in the agrimarketing world feel free to contact me for the next episode. Thank you for listening.  

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. In this episode we’re going to get an in-depth preview of the new NAMA NEXUS event that will be taking place in Milwaukee, WI, October 14-16. I spoke with committee chair Kasie Garcia. We’ll start with what the NAMA NEXUS means as well as the Economies of Ag. From there it’s on to the agenda and how it is different from NAMA Fall Conference of the past. You can still register on the NAMA website. So, that’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. It has been a busy time for the the ZimmComm Team in the past few weeks. After the Tech Hub Live conference it was on the way to the Southern Peanut Growers Conference, Ag Media Summit, ACE Annual Meeting and the Farm Progress Show. I’m on my way home from the 2025 FPS and thought I’d share some interviews. Besides an interview with Rob Shaffer, Illinois farmer, about the John Deere announcement about B30 biodiesel compatibility across all of their engine portfolio, I’m sharing an interview with Andy Heggenstaller, Global Oilseeds and Cereals Portfolio Strategy Head, Syngenta, who talks about Syngenta and M.S. Technologies and the next generation in soybean herbicide tolerance, and then Craig Abell, National Executive Agronomist, Syngenta, who talks about a new soil-applied insecticide product soon to come to market.  There are lots of other interviews and audio, besides photos, in our AgNewsWire virtual ag newsroom from this year’s Farm Progress Show. S

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. Lets us get a preview of the 2025 Agricultural Media Summit with Shelia Grobosky, BioZyme, and AMS Steering Committee Chair and LPC President.  It's all about meetings, keynote and general sessions, breakouts, InfoExpo, awards, ACT student members, sponsors and more. That’s the ZimmCast now now. I hope you enjoy it thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. In this program we’re going to get a preview of the 2025 IFAJ Congress which will be held in Kenya. After our preview I’m going to add a most recent example of how you can make your news release talk. More at the end. So, let’s get started. I have Steve Werblow, IFAJ President and Aghan Daniel, MESHA, the coordinating organization. First up is Steve followed by Daniel. The give us details about the Congress and the location it will be held as well as who can register and attend the Congress. Daniel and his organization will certainly have a variety of interesting places to see and of course, talk to ag journalists from around the world. If you haven’t attended an IFAJ Congress I can’t recommend it enough.  So, before I close I include an interview with Performance Nutrition. The company had us distribute a news release for them and we worked with them on an interview to add a voice to their message. We’re getting more requests for this. Their interview i

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. The ZimmComm Team are enjoying some time in paradise right near the Gulf of America. The weather has been great and we’ve had enough rain so that everything is green and growing. In this episode Cindy and I discuss the changes we’re making to ZimmComm. We recently announced that we are going to retire from business travel starting Jan. 1, 2026. That has been a very big part of the work we pioneered along with the use of social media in agricultural marketing. But we’ve got plenty to do as we continue to distribute news releases with our AgNewsWire service. In fact, we started out with the idea of including audio files in news releases for our clients. We called them Talking News Releases and because of our background in farm radio we knew the frustration of not being able to get an interview or sound bite. When you want to have an audio interview included in your news release we will produce it and publish it with no extra cost. We’ll work with you on th

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. In this episode I’m going to share a couple of interviews from the NAMA Agri-Marketing Conference. One is with Gardner Hatch, Executive Director, NAFB and Debbie Boyle, Vice President, Kynetic. They talk about a new NAFB listener survey. Then I have an interview with Melanie Rice, Brownfield Ag News, about becoming the new President of NAMA. Before I do this I’m going to talk about a ZimmComm announcement Cindy and I published last week. Basically, we are retiring from business travel starting at the end of 2025. Besides our 21 years with ZimmComm we traveled a lot for many years before we started ZimmComm.  We founded the company in 2004 as the first social media-based agricultural communications company and pioneered “event blogging” for farm and biofuels conferences, capturing the sights and sounds in photos and interviews. Nearly 225,000 photos and countless interviews and miles later, we have decided to hang up our traveling bags and spend more time

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. The first day of spring started the day after the annual Agri-Pulse Ag & Food Summit and National Ag Day Activities. We have published virtual newsrooms on our AgNewsWire website and story posts on AgWired. So, in this episode I'd like to share a few of the interviews and audio from the events. I'll start out with Agri-Pulse. You can listen to the opening remarks from Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason. Next will be Jim Sutter, CEO, USSEC and then Jane Franch, Sr. Director, Climate Impact, Pivot Bio. I'll move to the National Ag Day Activities with a student panel discussion. The students are Taylor Rogers, National Grange Youth Ambassador; Lance Williams, AFA advisor; Caroline Groth, FFA Eastern Region Vice President; and Matias Habib, National 4H. Moderated by Miles Chiotti, Manager, Public & Industry Relations - Agriculture & Turf Division at John Deere. It is Cindy’s time to be in Washington, DC this week for

In this episode I’m going to share some Commodity Classic which was almost at the highest attendance ever. We were in the Mile High city of Denver, CO. The weather was mostly perfect but we did have some wind, rain and snow at the end. Next year the event will take place in San Antonio. Once again Syngenta made my trip to Classic possible. So, in the program I have with me the following: Eric Boeck, Regional Director of North America Seeds, Syngenta Jeff Cecil, Crop Protection Marketing Head, Syngenta North America Steve Sterchi, Product and Commercial Strategy Lead, Syngenta North America Kramer Farney, GHX Marketing, Golden Harvest Justin Welch, Head of Decision Agronomy, Golden Harvest Coming up next for me on the agriblogging highway is the Agri-Pulse Ag and Food Policy Summit in Washington, DC followed with the National Ag Day Activites. Then it’s Cindy turn to go to DC for the ACE Fly-in. Things start to settle down but I’ll be in KC, MO for the Agri-Marketing Conference in April.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. In this episode I’m going to share some interviews with last week’s CattleCon 2025 and CIRB Annual Mtg. I was in San Antonio while Cindy was in Bonita Springs, FL. This is definitely the busy time! So, let’s get started with CattleCon. I talked with Colin Woodall, CEO, NCBA who says they were going to break 8,500 attending. Additionally, he talks about the top issues the organization is working on. Next I have Kevin Good, VP Industry Relations, CattleFax. Kevin gave a full presentation on the stage during the CattleFax session. Afterward I interviewed him to hear his outlook for cattle and beef and what is factors are impacting them. Now, I turned to CIRB. Cindy interviewed Tara Smith, Deputy Executive Vice President, CIRB. Tara talks about the need for educating new people working in the new administration and Congress about the importance of crop insurance. Finally, I have Cindy’s interview with Lindsey Rinkenberger, CIRB Chairwoman, COUNTRY Financial.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. While Cindy was home during the major snow storm in Florida I was attending the Clean Fuels Conference in San Diego, CA. The weather was delightful for the conference. However, in the Pensacola, FL area there was eight to ten inches of snow, something that hasn’t happened in over 150 years! But it has all melted and we’re mostly back to normal. So, let’s talk about clean fuels. We created a virtual ag newsroom once again for the conference that used to be named the National Biodiesel Conference. It was the first one we created many years ago. You can find that newsroom with photos, interviews and session audio right here. In this episode I’m going to share some of the interviews I did. So, let’s get started. First up I interviewed Kent Engelbrecht, ADM, serving as Chairman of the Clean Fuels Alliance America. Following him is Kurt Kovarik, VP of Government Affairs, Clean Fuels; then Tom Verry, Director of Outreach and Development; and to close things up

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. ZimmComm is now entering its 21st year. Who would have thought? We officially announced our company at the 2004 National Agri-Marketing Conference. We had our first booth at the conference in 2005 which means we’ve exhibited for twenty of them! I thought you might like to hear the first audio podcast I recorded in January of 2005. We were just starting to figure out what we could do with our AgWired blog. It’s a short episode. I’m going to share some other audio after this. So, that was the start and it has sure changed over the years. So, let’s look at this year. I was working at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences in New Orleans and thought I’d focus on the outlook for cotton. I would not be surprised if there are some changes after the presidential inauguration. But I’m going to start with Gary Adams, CEO of the National Cotton Council. He talks about the cotton industry outlook and then moves onto the farm bill.  Following Gary is Daren Abney, Executive

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman along with Cindy Zimmerman. Welcome to another year of agriblogging and farm podcasting. It’s hard to believe that we’re coming close to 21 years since we started ZimmComm in 2004. Cindy and I have worked together in the ag marcom field for about 21 years before that. Now we’re doing some thinking and planning for 2025. I sense that this year will be a big one for us We’ve already got plans made for the same conferences during the upcoming months. We traveled to work at 20 different events last year. So, we’ll see how things go as time moves on. We started taking photos at events 20 years ago when Flickr started. Since then we’ve uploaded 222,000 photos and they have collectively received 38 million views. In 2024 we uploaded 6,611 photos from the events and they have been viewed 1.1 million views. On the audio side of things we started using Libsyn as our audio/podcast server platform in 2017. In that time, and just looking at our ZimmComm Golden Mic Aud

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. In this episode I’m going to share some interviews from the NAFB Trade Talk about reactions from the recent presidential election.  I’m going to include Mary Kay Thatcher, Syngenta Sr. Manager, Federal Government and Industry Relations; Brian Jennings, ACE CEO; Geoff Cooper, RFA CEO and Ethan Lane, NCBA, VP of Government Affairs. Adding to these interviews, Cindy recently interviewed Kip Tom, Indiana farmer and served as the Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture during President Trump’s previous term. You can listen to his reactions here. That’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast.  In this episode we’ll get a preview of the AgGateway Annual Conference that will be starting November 11th in Austin. I talked with Brent Kemp, President and CEO, about what AgGateway works to accomplish and what the schedule looks like. I’ll be there to take photos and collect some good interviews and session audio. I’ll be going straight from there to Kansas City for a day of the NAFB Convention before heading back to ZimmComm World Headquarters. Looking over the last years that I’ve attended AgGateway meetings it seems to just continue to growing and refining the work they do. So, that’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening. 

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. In this episode I am going to share some audio from the recent Syngenta Media Summit 2024 that was held in the new crop protection facility in Greensboro, NC. I am grateful for the opportunity to be with a group of agricultural journalists and have personal time with Syngenta leadership. You’ll hear more about the new facility. I have created a virtual newsroom on AgNewsWire that contains photos as well as interviews and other audio for ag media to use. I’ve picked out the welcome we had from Jeff Cecil, Head of North America Crop Protection Marketing, in the form of a one on one interview about advancing innovation for the US grower. After that you’ll hear closing comments from Vern Hawkins, Regional Director, North America President. He focused on advancing American agriculture.  That’s the ZimmCast for now. Please let me know if you have ideas for a future podcast. Just email me at chuck@zimmcomm.biz.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. It’s time for the 2024 NAMA Fall Conference which will be held in Minneapolis, MN, October 14-16. The theme is “Fall Back” and you’ll hear why in my interview with Laura Rustmann, Director of Marketing and Sales, J.L. Farmakis, Inc. and Chair of the committee that is organizing the conference. Cindy and I have enjoyed a few weeks without travel since the Farm Progress Show but things will get started again the beginning of October. I will not be able to attend the NAMA Fall Conference this year due to a conflict but we’re going to get a preview from Laura. That’s the ZimmCast for now. Please let me know if you have ideas for a future podcast. Just email me at chuck@zimmcomm.biz. 

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. I’ve lost count of how many Farm Progress Shows I have attended but it’s a lot. This year in Boone, IA we had great weather and that’s not always the case. But it was also an opportunity to see friends as well as clients. I was only on site for Tuesday and half of Wednesday but I recorded 26 interviews that you can find on AgNewsWire in our virtual newsroom for the event. So, speaking of clients and the fact that we’re always interested in what’s new in the world of agribusiness I’m going to share interviews with several companies. They include: Scott Nelson, Make Hay; Thad England, Groundwork Bioag; Craig Dick, Phospholutions; Scott Trbovich, Taranis and Steve Nicholson, Rabo AgriFinance. They’ll go in that order. We post the ZimmCast on AgWired as the official podcast. We also post stories using other interviews as we have time so keep your eye out for them too. That’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. I’m Chuck Zimmerman. Although Cindy and I got a little break from the agriblogging highway things got busy again. In this episode I’m going to share a few interviews that have a focus on a new Farm Bill. What do you think? Is it still possible this year or will it be sometime in 2025? You will hear different thoughts from Ted McKinney, NASDA, Sonny Perdue, University of Georgia Chancellor, Representative Austin Scott, (R-GA) and Representative Frank Lucas, (R-OK). After these interviews I’ll provide you with a preview of this year’s Ag Media Summit which will start August 3 through the 6th. This is the 25th AMS and it will be held in Kansas City, Missouri. I’ll be taking lots of photos so keep your eye out for them throughout the event and feel free to download and share. That’s the ZimmCast for now. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.