National Agriculture Day
Today, March 25, 2014, is National Agriculture Day. It’s a day to recognize and celebrate the abundance provided by agriculture.
Today is also Norman Borlaug’s 100th birthday.
There are major events being held in Washington, D.C.; and at CIMMYT, the international wheat breeding station in Mexico where Borlaug did much of his work; and the state of Iowa is unveiling a statue at the U.S. Capitol.
“Lawmakers unveiled a statue of Norman Borlaug on Tuesday in a ceremony on what would have been his 100th birthday. Borlaug died in 2009.
“The Iowa native and University of Minnesota graduate is credited with saving as many as 1 billion people from hunger by creating a type of wheat that was disease-resistant and high-yielding. His work won him the 1970 Nobel Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.”
Here’s more information:
- “The Father of the Green Revolution” in Cosmos Magazine, written by CIMMYT Director General Thomas Lumpkin:http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/father-green-revolution/
- The official Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security Website: www.borlaug100.org
- Our #Borlaug100 Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/cimmyt/norman-e-borlaug/
- CIMMYT’s global wheat tracker: http://rusttracker.cimmyt.org/
Servi-Tech in the News
Good afternoon!
Servi-Tech has a couple of mentions in the current issue of Ag Professional magazine.
And here are the photos:
Caption: Panel and roundtable discussions dominated the annual meeting schedule. Talking to the crowd during the “Precision Ag Implementation in Your Business” consultant panel are (left to right) John Payne, Servi-Tech, Inc., Ransom, Kan.; Blaine Viator, Ph.D., Calvin Viator & Associates, Labadieville, La.; and Matt Weller, Centrol Inc., Marshall, Minn.
Caption: The new president of NAICC, Gary Coukell, stands between the two Crop Consultants of the Year – Tim Moline, left, and Andrew Vrbka- during the presentation of awards in New Orleans.
37 Nebraska Icons
Good morning!
We ran across an interesting article on Twitter this morning and thought we’d share.
On March 1, 1867, Nebraska became the 37th state. To celebrate Nebraska’s birthday the Lincoln Journal Star published a list of 37 Nebraska icons.
Many of our customers and employees live in Nebraska. We hope you enjoy this!
Servi-Tech Agronomist Earns National Award
A Servi-Tech agronomist earned national recognition for his achievements in crop consulting in Nebraska.
Andrew Vrbka of Geneva earned the 2013 Crop Consultant of the Year award through the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants. Vrbka accepted the award in New Orleans with his wife, Jennifer.
Andrew Vrbka received the 2013 Consultant of the Year award from the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants. He received the award at NAICC’s annual meeting in New Orleans on Jan. 31. The award recognizes entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, innovation and community involvement by an agricultural consultant.
Vrbka is a technical support agronomist for Servi-Tech. He consults on close to 16,000 acres of mostly corn and soybeans in south central Nebraska. As part of Servi-Tech’s precision agronomy group, Vrbka is involved in variable rate fertilizer and seed applications, data management, yield analysis, and satellite imagery. He lives in Geneva and has worked for Servi-Tech for 10 years.
Rick Runyan, Servi-Tech’s central Nebraska manager, said Vrbka is deserving of the award.
“Andrew has a very strong work ethic,” Runyan said. “He’s very dedicated to providing service and technology to his customers and to Servi-Tech employees.”
The NAICC is a professional society that represents the nation’s crop production and research consultants. Vrbka has been a member of the NAICC for five years and said he’s seen other seasoned Servi-Tech agronomists win the award. Other Servi-Tech award winners include Orvin Bontrager, Jeff Kugler, Clark Poppert, Dave Green, and Bryan Boroughs.
“It was a pretty big surprise,” Vrbka said.
Mitch Counce, CEO of Servi-Tech, also said Vrbka is deserving of the award.
“He has been very active and innovative in working with new technologies that are available for farmers,” Counce said.
Vrbka does crop consulting work for Brian Isernhagen of Stormy Valley Farms in south central Nebraska, including collecting soil samples, bug scouting and precision agriculture. Isernhagen said Vrbka is a reliable consultant he can count on.
“Andrew is very thorough and is very good at his job,” Isernhagen said.
Awards
Good afternoon!
Awards were given out to Servi-Tech’s crop service and lab employees this month. Congratulations to everyone who won an award!
Here are some photos of the ceremonies.
Bryan Boroughs received the 400,000 acre award.
Shane Wurm received the 300,000 acre award.
Jared Andersen received the 200,000 acre award and the 15-year award.
BJ New was named a senior agronomist.
Beau Davis was named a senior agronomist.
Bryce Vance was named a technical service agronomist.
Andrew Vrbka was named a technical service agronomist.
Orvin Bontrager received the 35-year award.
Kirk Rice received the 35-year award.
Mitch Counce received the 35-year award.
Mike Dart received the 25-year award and the agronomist of the year award.
Patty Pruett received the 30-year award.
Fred Vocasek received the 30-year award.
Ellie Elmore received the 25-year award.
Jeff Nitsch received the 25-year award.
Nancy Jenny received the 25-year award.
Cindy Klein received the 15-year award.
Teresa Hafer received the 10-year award.
Betty Spease received the 15-year award.
Clint Burmester received the 10-year award.
Steve Bryan received the 10-year award.
Gary Henry received the 10-year award.
Seth Lade received the Leadership Award.
Justin Meyer received the New Employee of the Year Award.
Dr. Daniel Hillel and the future of agriculture
Last month I met Dr. Daniel Hillel at the Agronomy meetings in Tampa. He is small in stature, but a giant in his contribution to agriculture. For me, meeting him was like a basketball fan being able to hang out with Michael Jordan or a country-western fan getting to be backstage with George Strait. Daniel received the 2012 Borlaug World Food Prize, the agricultural equivalent of the Nobel prize, except I think you actually have to have made a significant life-time achievement — not just have made a couple of speeches about climate change or world peace. Daniel is credited as inventing the concept of drip irrigation. He told me he is “83 going on 120” and lives on the side of Mount Carmel in Israel.
His introduction as keynote speaker for the “Blue Waves, Green Dreams, and Shades of Gray – Perspectives on Water” symposium tells more: Dr. Daniel Hillel was born in 1930 in the semi-desert, man-made oasis of Southern California. He was taken at a very young age to Palestine, then in the first stages of reclamation from centuries of environmental degradation. At the age of 8, he was placed in a pioneering settlement in the Jezreel Valley, where he was first exposed to, and captivated by, the open environment and its contrasting counterpoints of soggy winter and searing summer, open sky and bare earth. Given a spade and asked to direct the frothy waters from a ditch, he marveled at the exuberant growth of tender saplings that rose up defiantly in the midst of the dry plain. That early fascination eventually became an avocation and a vocation, a professional pursuit and a labor of love.
After World War II he was brought back to the United States, where he studied agriculture and worked briefly for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1951, having earned a master’s degree in soil science and climatology from Rutgers University, he returned to newly established Israel to help in the young State’s development. Working for the Soil Conservation Service, he participated in the first survey of the country’s soil and water resources. He then joined a small group that ventured into the Negev Desert and established the first settlement in the rugged Highlands of that region, named Sdeh-Boker. The work was hard and dangerous, and three of the twelve original settlers lost their lives in the first year. Later, the pioneering settlement was visited by Israel’s founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who was so impressed by the venture that he decided to resign from the Government and came to join in the venture.
While working on land reclamation, Daniel Hillel also conducted research on the water relations of desert plant habitats and the properties of their soils. That work was granted a doctorate by the Hebrew University. Dr. Hillel then continued his research in soil physics and hydrology in the U.S., first at the University of California and at the U.S. Salinity Laboratory, and later at the University of Massachusetts. Over the ensuing decades, he has taught and directed the research of scores of students, published or co-published over two hundred research papers and reports, and some twenty definitive textbooks on various aspects of soil physics, hydrology, agronomy, and the environment.
He has also served as advisor to international institutions, including the F.A.O. and the World Bank, taken part in advisory missions to some thirty developing countries, and cooperated with the Goddard Institute of NASA in extensive studies of portending climate change and its potential impacts on global and regional agriculture and on natural ecosystems.
In June, 2012, it was announced that Dr. Hillel would be awarded the 2012 World Food Prize at the annual Borlaug Dialogue international symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 18, 2012. The announcement ceremony, held at the U.S. State Department, was presided over by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said:
“Dr. Hillel’s work will become even more important as we grapple with how to feed the world’s growing population…And according to the latest FAO estimates, the world will need to produce 60 percent more food than we do today to feed everyone. In that same time, the demand for water to grow food will rise by almost 20 percent. But our water supply is finite. So if we’re going to strengthen food security, we have to get more out of each drop.”
Giving Thanks
It’s November. That means it’s time to give thanks for everyone who keeps our country running.
What are you thankful for this season?
Each November the High Plains Journal publishes a photo a day (which they call ‘Thankful for farmers and ranchers’) on its Facebook page. We encourage you to check it out. It’s wonderful.
Snow Scenes
Good afternoon!
It’s been steadily snowing all day here in southwest Kansas. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be 65 degrees.
Here are some snow scenes from around Dodge City.
Recruiting Events
Good afternoon!
We just wanted to take some time and thank all of the universities we’ve visited with in recent weeks during recruiting fairs.
We’ve met some excellent students so far!
Here’s a list of where we’ll be recruiting in the future. If you’re a student and you’re interested in a job with Servi-Tech, come find us!
You can also find the list of recruiting events on out website, www.servi-techinc.com.
We enjoyed attending the Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources career fair earlier this week at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Servi-Tech on Campus
Good afternoon!
Servi-Tech is recruiting at a college near you!
You can find the colleges we’ll be recruiting at on our website, servi-techinc.com, or in the graphic below.
From Field to Field 