Missouri Names New Agriculture Director

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has appointed Don Steen to lead the Missouri Department of Agriculture. Mr. Steen replaces Katie Smith, who is stepping down in anticipation of an expanding family.

Mr. Steen, 58 of Eldon, was born and raised in Missouri and continues working on the same farm where he grew up and where he raised his family. His family has been in the turkey business for 35 years and also raises cattle. Mr. Steen has a bachelor’s in animal science from the University of Missouri and continued his education at Ozark Christian College. From 1990 to 1998 Mr. Steen served the people of Cole, Camden and Miller Counties in the Missouri House of Representatives.

While keeping up an active and productive farm, Mr. Steen also made time to volunteer and advocate on behalf of Missouri farmers. He is an elder and active leader at Ninth Street Christian Church and serves on the Board of Trustees for Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Mo. Mr. Steen has served as an advocate for agriculture working in conjunction with the Missouri Farm Bureau. Steen, and his wife of 35 years, Alisa, have four children and eight grandchildren which live in Missouri, all very near the family farm.

Mr. Steen’s appointment is subject to Senate confirmation and is effective July 7, 2008.

Virginia Tomatoes Available Now

For Release: June 23, 2008

Contact: Elaine Lidholm, 804/786-7686

SAFE, FRESH VIRGINIA TOMATOES AVAILABLE NOW

Virginia tomatoes are on the Food and Drug Administration’s “safe source” list, but until now, they weren’t always available. This week the Virginia tomato harvest began in earnest, and consumers concerned about tomato safety may now rest easy as safe, fresh Virginia tomatoes appear in grocery stores, roadside stands, farmer’s markets and farms.

“Just because you buy a tomato in Virginia doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a Virginia tomato,” says Todd P. Haymore, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS). “Now that our harvest has begun, shoppers will see a lot of Virginia tomatoes, and many times stores will indicate that tomatoes are Virginia Grown or locally-grown. Of course, if you buy directly from the farmer at a roadside stand or on the farm, you know you’re getting a genuine Virginia tomato.”

Haymore reminds consumers that Virginia tomatoes were never associated with the recent outbreak of salmonella. “In fact,” he said, “when the outbreak occurred, Virginia tomatoes were still in the field. But they’re ripening quickly and our growers are picking them every day.” If stores or restaurants do not identify tomatoes as Virginia Grown, he encourages consumers to ask managers about the source of their product. If they’re not from Virginia or another approved source, he suggests they not buy or eat them.

To find sources for fresh, Virginia tomatoes and other produce, go to www.virginiagrown.com. For more information on tomatoes and food safety, visit VDACS’ Web site at www.vdacs.virginia.gov and click on the tomato button.

Chaney, Hinton named to head agritourism council.

Carl Chaney and Jeremy Hinton have served as regional representatives on the council since its formation in 2002... more

Visit KDA's Agritourism Division here.

The Great Utah Agriculture Survey

The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food sought comments from local elementary school students about the importance of agriculture in their lives.
Here's what a few of them said during National Agriculture Day, 2008.

Colorado: Little Bugs Making a Big Difference

(Information on this amazing bug can be seen below the article)

The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) took an innovative approach to biological pest control over 60 years ago and established the Palisade Insectary.

To this day, the Insectary is among only a handful of programs across the U.S. that provides farmers, ranchers and resource managers with dozens of species of beneficial insects and mites as tools for use in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs.

The CDA is committed to IPM to combat weeds and insect pests in an economical and environmentally sound way, and as part of that commitment the Insectary leads the way in biological pest control.
The Insectary, located in Palisade, Colorado, produces and releases about 30 different species of biological control agents. These agents are used against insect pests such as the alfalfa weevil and cereal leaf beetle, or weeds such as leafy spurge, field bindweed, purple loosestrife, musk thistle, diffuse knapweed, and most recently the water-using invasive tree, tamarisk. The Insectary has greenhouses and insect rearing rooms as well as facilities for storage and shipping of biocontrol agents.

Insectary staff grows plants, such as the toadflaxes, with their beautiful snapdragon-like flowers, and feed them to insects, such as the toadflax weevil. Don’t feel sorry for the toadflaxes though, they are unpalatable to livestock and wildlife and degrade and devalue rangelands. Fortunately the little black weevils have brought infestations of Dalmatian toadflax under control in western Colorado.

The Insectary started as a local insect rearing facility but has expanded to become an important state and region-wide biocontrol center dedicated to producing and releasing biocontrol agents but also to formulating recommendations and procedures for effective use of biological control in IPM programs.

For more on the Palisade Insectary, visit our website or call (866) 324-2963.

Photo: Oberea erythrocephala

Leafy spurge is a highly invasive, deep rooted perennial that may cover meadows and grasslands with a dense monoculture of waist-high plants; choking out other vegetation and providing little or no forage for livestock. Fortunately there are several biological control insects that are very effective at suppressing the invasion.

Most common are the leafy spurge flea beetles, but in some settings they are getting help from the red-headed leafy spurge stem borer, Oberea erythrocephala (big names for a small beetle).

The stem borers are in the family Cerambycidae (long horned beetles, named for their long antennae), and the adults are dark, elongate, active fliers while the larvae are pale yellow and spend their time within the stems of leafy spurge. Adults are collected in June and July when they are actively seeking out spurge plants, where they lay eggs high in the stems. Larvae hatch and bore down through the stem to the root crown; seriously weakening the plant and stopping seed production. This insect does not reach high numbers and so will not provide control on it’s own but may be very useful in combination with the spurge flea beetles.

COSDAnauts Launch Into The Blogosphere

Welcome to the exciting new COSDA blog. Here we can trade ideas, keep in touch and offer each other up to the minute information. There are no rules, no right, no wrong, just a chance to express thoughts, seek insight and promote the great things each of you are doing.

Hopefully this blog will become a valuable resource that will benefit our individual state's agricultural industry and collectively improve agriculture globally. Using this blog we can post text, audio and video files, plus set up links to other news and information sites.

I want to thank Becky Ozuna, our E-Communications Specialist here at the Texas Department of Agriculture, for setting up the site and making it user friendly. All of you will be receiving an email from her on how you can begin publishing on the site. Enjoy.

Bryan Black
Assistant Commissioner for Communications
Texas Department of Agriculture

President's Letter

Fellow COSDAnauts –

If you are anything like me, you stay busy keeping abreast of news involving agriculture and politics. Knowing who said what is crucial when a local reporter calls to ask what your boss thinks about this, that, or the other. But media monitoring is only part of my job. I am also responsible for developing key messages and communication tools at the drop of a hat, which would be a snap if it didn’t frequently involve issues that are evolving or about which little information is available.

Fortunately for communicators like you and me, there’s an organization whose members face the same daily challenges -- the Communication Officers of State Departments of Agriculture. Time and again, COSDA members show they are willing to help a fellow member with an issue the communicator feels he or she is trying to address alone. We all know how good it feels to get messages, feedback and communication advice from another communicator who’s faced a similar challenge.

We’re lucky that technology has evolved to the point where we can share scads of information with a simple mouse click. But, if you’re like me, you want to find ways to use technology more effectively. That’s why I’ve arranged for Chuck Zimmerman to provide our professional development at “Kansas 2008: COSDA ‘til the Cows Come Home.”

Chuck Zimmerman is president of ZimmComm New Media, which specializes in blogging and podcasting, two communication techniques I’d like to know more about. He will explain why these techniques are useful, and he will train us how we can incorporate them into our existing communication strategies.

Information posted on www.ZimmComm.biz show how blogging is changing the way we communicate:

• More than 147 million Americans use the Internet and more than 57 million read blogs.
• Of companies surveyed, 89 percent think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
• Twenty-two of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs.
• Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.

Podcasts, on the other hand, are media files that are distributed on the Internet for playback on portable media players or personal computers. Just last week I received an email from USDA announcing that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is offering 30-second PSAs to educate folks about how to say safe and cope with the stresses of flooding. The PSAs are available to the media for broadcast, or they can be downloaded for playback by individuals.

Technology is changing the way we communicate, and COSDA members need to keep pace. Plan to attend our meeting October 19 to 22 in Topeka, Kansas, so you, too, can learn how to use these new communication strategies.

Lisa Taylor
COSDA President
Kansas Department of Agriculture