“Managing with Uncertainty in a Volatile Time” — 23rd Annual NC Joint Grains Conference

The Joint Grains Conference is scheduled for January 12 and 13 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Durham.  Southern Farm Network News Director Rhonda Garrison is covering the Joint Commodities Conference and will provide updates through the the days to come… Click here for coverage and presentations…

The North Carolina Small Grain Growers Association is host of the event this year, and Dan Weathington, Executive Director of NC Small Grains explains the theme of this year’s conference:

"Our conference this year is concentrating on, not only agriculture in North Carolina and selling our products here, but what we need to do to get into the world market.  Mike Guire, he's with the Policy Division, USDA foreign service, he'll be talking about ag trends, particularly about China and the world market."

The Thursday afternoon roundtable discussion, according to Weathington will include Lawrence Davenport, Chairman, NC State Board of Trustees, as well as:

"We have a panel that will be hosted by Ray Starling, on that panel we've got Senator Brent Jackson and Senator David Rowzer and they'll be talking about coping with the volatile times in the agricultural industry and still trying to stay in business.  They'll be looking at it from the legislative perspective with the two senators on the panel."

Weathington says that in addition to the panel discussion, the production and efficiency awards will be presented as well as remarks from the President of the National Association of Wheat Growers:

"We have a session on Thursday afternoon where all the four different commodities will have updates from different researchers in their particular area — that's corn, cotton, wheat and soybeans.  We will have an update on the national level  from National Wheat Growers' CEO Dana Peterson.  She comes to us from Kansas, she's been on the job for about a year, she was my counterpart in Kansas.  So we have a young lady that's leading the National Association of Wheat Growers and we're proud that she's going to be a part of the meeting."

Weathington gives a sneak preview of the production research update for wheat:

"Well, one of the things that we're spending a good bit of money at the university, in fact almost half a million dollars this year on behalf of wheat farmers at the university, some things that we put into place, is a part of that research has been announced but we'll emphasize that Dr. Randy Weis has a work net set up — so if we have a problem in wheat… We had our first alert that went out last week showing some fertilizer deficiencies  in wheat and had about a 3 minute video, that will be there.  We've also put money into a calculator to help farmers — it's a slide rule calculator to help farmers get the correct population status, we'll be passing those out at the conference.  We've got numerous studies on: effects of nitrogen on wheat;  time of application;  insects; fungicides will be talked about — when to apply, if to apply, don't apply, if you need to apply — so those are just some of the things that they'll be covering in the different crop breakouts."

Then on Friday morning, each individual association will conduct their annual business meeting before the conference breaks around noon.

For more information or to register for the free event go to: www.ncgrainsconference.org.