Kyle Tom is the 8th generation of Tom Farms located in Indiana. They are growers of corn and beans, and working to improve precision agriculture technologies. Kyle joins me in Anaheim, California during Bayer CropScience's AgVocacy Issues Forum, ahead of the 2018 Commodity Classic.

• 1:37 - Eight generations
• 2:55 - Should we talk more about fuel, fiber and everyday items?
• 3:30 - Kyle's Chicago Study
• 6:00 - Precise inputs
• 7:55 - Detecting hot spots
• 10:00 - Training is essential
• 12:24 - Farm Bill
• 13:15 - Kyle and Twitter

Thank you for joining another episode of Keeping Ag Real, part of the Farm Rural Ag Network. Visit www.KeepingAgReal.com for past episodes and additional content.

As always, your support is greatly appreciated! ~ Jenny

 

I visited with Connie Diekman, Director of University Nutrition for Washington University in St. Louis to discuss messaging directed towards the general public, discuss differences in today's collegiate demographic and those in older generations. This leads to covering multiple nutrition programs which are currently being implemented at Washington University.

Have you heard of FastCasual.com? Its a wealth of knowledge for anyone interested in the multi-faceted restaurant and food sectors. The selection of topics which are covered by Fast Casual was too extensive so we asked Twitter, what they'd like to learn more about. 

Food Truck Nation was an easy winner, winner, chicken dinner. I had the opportunity to meet with Cherryh Cansler, Managing Editor of FastCasual.com.

In the agriculture community, we often hear that someone needs to be teaching children about agriculture. In this segment around community gardens and urban farms, we discover that someone is educating children about agriculture. Listen to find out more.

This week's episode of Keeping Ag Real, steps off a new segment called "Grocery Store Gurus." Gracie Weinzierl returns as a co-host to chat about destination grocery shopping, misleading local food labeling and funny stuff at farmers' markets.

They always say, it takes a village and that village just expanded. There is a new player in the agriculture advocacy world. Today's guest is Nate Birt from Farm Journal's Trust In Food initiative. This new effort kicks-off with the Trust In Food Symposium, Jan. 23-24, in Chicago. 

Nate shares about the goals of Trust In Food, how they feel this effort is different than any other and the intense collaboration.

This week I interviewed my non-agriculture, city dwelling sister - for good reason. Her career path is in the area of Operational Excellence Coaching. What does that mean? Take a listen.

We play a word association game, I explain what GMO means and we toss a little shade at each other. Most importantly she offers perspectives we may not normally hear.

This is part 2 of a great conversation with lifestyle blogger, Natasha Nicholes. We dive in talking about how she has grown an old, dirty lot on the south side of Chicago into a beautiful learning tool. She discusses Harry Connick Jr.'s involvement and her goals for the future. We take a shot at explaining Klout Scores and finish up with her interview with Kelly Clarkson, just another mom with four kids. 

As always, thanks for joining Keeping Ag Real!

Soundbite Preview of Part 2 with Natasha Nicholes

This episode welcomes Natasha Nicholes, a wife, mom, blogger, speaker and advocate for truth behind food - I forgot to mention her bubbly personality and contagious laugh. Natasha sits down with hostess, Jenny Schweigert to discuss her connections to agriculture and being at the top of THE 500 Top AgVocates in 2017 list. We wrap up this first part of a three series pods by revealing her thoughts about the ag community.