One of the photos I took while I was in California was in a TV studio. I have to admit it stood out quite a bit in the set of photos I asked people to prioritize blog content. And that led Lakeshia Brown (check out her blog Uncommon Chick) to ask, what was up and who was speaking. Here is the photo Keshia asked about:

I am not sure how familiar everyone is with the way a green screen works. I have to admit being impressed every time I see one! And this time was even more impressive because I was sitting in Hanford, California (alongside my bud Dino Giacomazzi) and the person at the green screen – Michelle Mello – was teaching a class in South Carolina about cotton! She talked to the kids about the cotton products they were wearing, about where cotton comes from and more! And Trista Waymire was behind the control panel cuing up images and controlling audio, etc.

In the photo below you see Michelle in front of the green screen. You can also see the students in a monitor to the left. That way, she can call on kids, see what they are doing, etc. It was really cool and far more interactive than I could have imagined! The monitor on the right showed a lot of the behind the scenes in the control room.

Just below, you can see a closer photo of that monitor….  And you can actually see two Michelles! The one on the right shows her telling the students about cotton plants. That was eactly what was going out to the classroom in South Carolina! She did a great job of teaching them about cotton plant physiology (or the parts of the plant like I did in this video). The other photo shows what is cued up to go on the screen next. and over to the far right you see the teleprompter that helps Michelle & Trista who works the control panel stay synchronized on what should be brought up next.

The program was started by a country farm bureau and is reaching out nationally! And I think we may all want to look at what we can do to help further develop the program. It would be great to develop more ag programs and recruit more teachers and with Michelle & Trista’s experience, I think building the program would rock!

I took some video — I hope you understand the audio and all aren’t the greatest, but I think this helps you get the feel of how the teaching from a distance worked. And you can get some cotton basics down too! You can also check out the posts on my Cotton 101 series to learn more about my favorite fiber!

There is also a program about dairy farming. You can sign up for classes by visiting the Kings County videoconferencing site.

I know ranchers Troy & Stacey Hadrick have regular Skype conversations with a class that adopted them.

Have you ever done distance learning programs via video conferencing?

Related articles

• Idealistic about the Future of Farming & Working at Monsanto
• Cotton – Maybe My Last Photos of a Harvest Ready Field in 2012 (Day 6)
• Video of Giacomazzi Dairy Farm Inspires a Visit Even If Delayed
• Why would a farmer plant GMO cotton?

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I never expected to see a cotton plant in the wild on Hawaii’s Big Island. And my friend Marsha actually saw it first. We thought it was a mirage for a while but we really did see a cotton plant on Hawaii’s Big Island! I was so excited that I couldn’t take photos quick enough! And of course, I had to ask Marsha to take a photo of me with the cotton plant too! And the photo of a cotton plant with the ocean in the background shows you how beautiful the location was here. If you are on the Big Island anytime and wonder about cotton, you may want to go by Lapakahi State Historical Park and visit the one lonely plant. Its an interesting park, a gorgeous view and my favorite fiber all in one!

And you can learn more about cotton from my Cotton 101 page!

The post Look What I Found Growing On Hawaii’s Big Island! Yep! COTTON! :) appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

DATELINE: Memphis, Tennessee Airport (644 miles from home), flying to Atlanta, Georgia (327 air miles from Memphis)

Hey Jake,

You know how much I travel for work? Well, I had a great trip recently and got to take Flat Stanley along! It was so much fun traveling with him and I got some special opportunities since he was along for the ride.

First step? Going to the airport and going through security. Since Stanley doesn’t fly as much as I do, I made sure he knew the rules before we went to the airport. Some of the rules are about liquids going through and others are about the screening. Sorry to say, the rules made me put Flat Stanley through a different machine than I went through but he went through it with a smile on his face the whole time. He went with my purse, jacket, etc and kept an eye on things.

People not made out of paper go through other machines called metal detectors & body scanners. That’s where I went through and once the TSAs were sure all was well, I rejoined Stanley and got ready to go to our gate & get on the airplane.

As we were getting on the airplane, I asked if we could say hello to the pilots and they were nice enough to show Stanley some of the controls! They even let us take a picture! And we got great seats in the front of the plane too so we could catch what was going on with other Delta airplanes & the ground crews handling our luggage & directing traffic! (Fun Delta Air Lines blog here I stumbled on.)

When we arrived in Atlanta, we got our luggage and needed to get to the hotel. We decided to catch a cab. There was a really nice lady working there who called cabs for us and she let Flat Stanley help! She seemed to smile as big as Stanley!

Then it was time to get to work!

Because I work with farmers, we were in Atlanta for some really big meetings with farmers from all across the US, We spent time talking to some of the people I work with about cotton farming. One of the people Stanley met was named Keylon Gholston. His job is finding new cotton plants that will do really well on cotton farms across the US. (Deltapine rocks!)

I don’t know if everyone in your class knows about how cotton grows from a seed to a plant to produce the lint that you find on Q-Tips, cotton balls, etc but my favorite use is the jeans and hoodies or t-shirts that I wear! Mr. Gholston even knows farmers in North Carolina who like to plant Deltapine cotton, Dekalb corn or Asgrow soybeans!

We also got a chance to visit with some farmers including Bob Walker – he’s a farmer who lives really close to Memphis. And we’re really good friends. In fact, he’s such a good friend that he let Alicia come out and “help” with cotton picking in October. I think you saw photos of that on the internet. We also checked out some things you can buy at the meeting like koozies with a cotton logo on them (but you know I already had some because I sent some to you & your family!)

I was working and in a meeting and my eye started bothering me. I have to tell you I got worried Jake. When I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, my eye was really, really red. It didn’t look like it was supposed to at all. And since I was so far from my doctor, I got a little nervous.

So I checked with some of my friends who know Atlanta really well and found a doctor there who could look at my eye and see if it was going to be okay. It kind of made it more fun to have Stanley along cause I had fun taking photos for your letter while I was waiting. One was just in the waiting room and then later I took one in the treatment room…. The doctor ran a lot of tests and told me it was kind of like a bruise and would be fine after a little while.

We had a crazy storm while I was there. And I was a bit worried about having Stanley out in all the freezing rain, snow and craziness. But he enjoyed getting a look at things from my hotel. We were on the 28^th floor so we could see a really long way. Everywhere we looked there was snow & ice! It was really weird to see almost no cars because Atlanta’s famous for traffic.

With the extra time in the hotel, we got to have a nice long lunch. I had soup and a sandwich but Stanley said he’d already eaten. Somehow he was able to make room for dessert though! Cheesecake with some blueberrys to go on top! We were making friends along the way too and enjoyed finding out our waiter was from The Netherlands. He thought it was cool that Nannae goes there for work!

One night that Stanley stayed at the hotel to watch TV and I went out in the bad weather, the bus service was escorted by policemen! Really, our bus had police cars going along with us. I guess Atlanta thinks farmers are really important people! It got to be a long trip though because the bus got stuck on a hill! The ice was too slippery for us to go up the hill!

But the roads DID FINALLY clear up and we were able to get a cab back to the airport. We were really happy to see the sun shining again and be able to head out again!

But first, we would have to do some things at the airport. There were a lot of people who had been wanting to go places so we went there early and patiently stood in line. We had to check our luggage and that line was longer than I’d like to remember but there were nice people there to chat with!

This time since Stanley knew more about what we had to do, I let him help. He even held my driver’s license as we went through the line to talk to the officers. But they don’t like you taking too many pictures so I won’t show those!

With extra time on our hands, we went to get our lunch at the airport but got distracted when we started talking to a guy who’s in the army. He’s stationed in Alaska and was returning to duty after having a break for the holidays. There’s an awful lot of snow in Alaska so we stopped complaining about Atlanta’s weather really quickly! The plane was able to leave and we were sure glad to get to fly out!

[slideshow]

The post Touring Airports & Atlanta with Flat Stanley & Farmers appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Recently I started having conversations with people about a big change I’m making. And while I’ve known it was coming for a while, I didn’t necessarily fully think through all of the implications…. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind a bit and if I rewind too much feel free to skip around.

I am so lucky

I have an incredible job. Friends and family joke that I was born a communicator. I took photos, wrote things down a lot, etc from very early. And I was blessed with the gift of gab. I can’t really imagine too many strangers – mainly cause I will approach most anyone with a question. To get paid to do something that seems so central to my being & happiness is amazing!

Somehow, I was also blessed with finding agriculture early in my career development. Somehow, very unexpectedly, they clicked together and since I’m Southern, that has mainly meant cotton. I can’t imagine what my life and career would be like without this incredible industry and the people I cherish.

In my career I have worked for trade magazines in Memphis. I moved to White Plains, New York for a great public relations job. I moved to the Mississippi Delta to do a wide variety of communications for a small cotton seed company of ~600 employees. And when that company was purchased by another, and after more than 15 years away from my hometown, I returned to Memphis and took a trade media relations focused role.

Yes, cotton has been central to my sense of self since I talked to my first cotton farmer in the 1980s. Such a very big part that when I decided to take the plunge into Twitter and blogging, I chose that for my “handle.”

Changing Jobs? Changing Cities?

Very few folks know that although I love my job, I had talked to a few folks about doing something different. You know it seems sometimes change will do you good. I think that even though I raised the topic with a few folks there was some disbelief that I would really make a change. I may have been one of the doubters too! 

Then in August I was told my job in cotton and crop protection would be relocated to St. Louis. I really wondered for a flash second what I would choose. I say a flash second because I was told that a new position doing some of the exact things I had proposed a year ago was also on the table. I had the option of moving for either job or remaining in my hometown of Memphis and finding something else. Hmmm… that takes some thought…

To tell the truth, I think I made the decision while we were having the conversation but there were several factors to consider.

Location

Is either location choice so strong that it makes the decision for me? I have lived in several places over my career. Let’s see how the two stack up.

Memphis

• I love Memphis and being back in Memphis has been incredible.
• I love being able to see my nephew’s band concerts or to play Beatles Rock Band with my niece just because.
• Calling my mom and asking if she wants to grab a bite is incredibly cool.
• An older niece is in Memphis for the first time in her life and I have the blessed reality of getting to spend a lot of time with her.
• I have great friends here who I relish time with.
• Great music venues everywhere you look. Everywhere.
• Tiger basketball.
• Wow with sunsets over the river.
• This is home even after being away for more than 15 years. Its incredibly deep in me.
• Snow is rare and in my world that is a good thing.

St. Louis

• I have a few friends from college there who I really enjoy hanging out with.
• The people I work with at Monsanto, some of them are truly great friends. Some are long time friends, from my days in the Delta others I have met more recently but are great friends just the same.
• My friends in St Louis have done everything they can to make me feel at home on my many visits there over the years. (This past weekend included one friend’s wedding and watching another’s daughter carve a pumpkin.)
• I hear there is great music… And there are lots of sports teams.
• It is on the river, just 4.5 to 5 hours north of Tom Lee Park.
• There are great camera stores in St. Louis and lots of places I’ve never photographed.
• Having home base move means the possible destinations of weekend trips change too.

Career Choices

So having figured out I can be happy either place, my decision had to be about what I wanted to do professionally. I have to say I’ve been very lucky in my career. I’ve got an incredible network that has always come through for me with job opportunities. I have a reasonably good reputation in the industry so I’d like to think with time & persistence, I could find something awesome.

My guess however is that something awesome wouldn’t happen for me in my field in Memphis. There are other options I could pursue here and I would have some flexibility in taking time to find the right job rather than needing to snap at the first thing to come along. But the reality is, I was able to get back here thanks to Monsanto and I’m not sure that I could find something else that would really be challenging and rewarding that also pulled upon what I think are strengths that I really enjoy.

The options in St. Louis were clear:

• Continue working for a company I believe in, one that has incredible vision for the future of agriculture.
• I could continue to work in the cotton industry I love or try my hand at something new that sounded right up my alley.
• I’d be able to remain in agriculture and have the ability to learn some new areas while continuing some of the things I already know.
• Work with folks I know, like and respect.
• Something that offers continued growth & development.

My Decision

As people bought charcoal and planned activities for Labor Day and as I hung out with friends on a vacation that was spent talking about telling your personal ag story, I was deciding what course my future would go. No doubt you have already figured out that I’m making the move to St. Louis and will continue to work for Monsanto. I’m really excited about the next chapter of my career and looking at some of the broader topics impacting agriculture. Its a new role so there isn’t an exact job description, or at least I haven’t gotten a copy of one yet.

Yes, this has already had a few folks accuse me of traitor-like behavior. One good friend who’s a cotton farmer actually suggested I’d have to change my Twitter handle and blog address to the past tense and say “JPlovedCOTTON.” He pronounced that “d” quite prominently but he knows you can take the girl out of the cotton but you can’t take the cotton out of the girl. And you certainly won’t take it out of my personal blog!

My job within public affairs will let me work with some of the other organizations engaged in agriculture, some of the media and social media too. With the number of things going on both for work and personally, I’ll be taking a little time before I actually make the move. So it will be after New Year’s before I put my house on the market so it will probably be spring or so before I relocate.

I’ve got great friends in St. Louis already asking to help me look for a house — one even suggested I get my primary criteria out and have a contest for them all to find me a home — winner gets a home cooked meal (I am afraid that may be selfish on my part as I’m not that good of a cook!).

Yes, a change is gonna come. And it’s a change I’m excited about! I can almost picture myself in the spring already enjoying the new job and location.

The post A Change Is Gonna Come appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Today I drove through the Mississippi Delta through occasional showers and heavy rain at times. There were quite a few fields harvested…. Corn was long gone, sorghum and some soybeans and rice were cut.

Even while driving at highway speeds I could see negative impacts of this untimely rain. So when I got to an area where the rain had stopped, I pulled off the highway to snap a few photos of rice fields.

Following are a couple of shots that show how consistent a rice field should look this time of year. As well as a close of rice heads.

The next few photos show you the tdamage in another field where lodging is an issue. Lodging simply means the plants are laying done before they have been harvested.

There are a few reasons lodging can happen in crops like rice, wheat and corn. Some that farmers have talked to me about are:
– Disease
– Bad weather (esp. wind, rain and hail)
– Genetics for stalk / shaft strength
– Inability to harvest on a timely basis

Hopefully, the weather will turn around before any additional damage is done because harvesting equipment have trouble picking the crops up, which means farmers end up leaving some of their yield on the ground.

Do you have questions about rice or lodging?

The post Rice Ready for Harvest, Lodging Becoming an Issue Though appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I thought I may pull up some things from international agriculture experiences I’ve had. It’s a bit of a change of pace so I guess we’ll see whether folks like this one before I do a bunch more.

One of my passions is travel and another is agriculture, cotton in particular, so it should be no surprise to find out that when I took a vacation to Turkey, a country that is famous for both the crop and textiles, that the two would come together. And while the vast majority of my days were spent sightseeing and relaxing (Celsius library, waterfalls, beaches, etc.), I also planned to visit a textile mill and a few cotton fields.

The first few days were all tourist… other than to see cotton friends in Izmir and seeing a few fields as we passed at highway speeds since my travel mate wasn’t an avid photographer or willing to indulge all my stopping requests. Those tourist stops included an incredible visit to Ephesus, yes the place known Biblically for the Ephesians who lived there as well as the home where Mary, the mother of Jesus, reportedly spent her later years. Shortly after my trip the Pope went to the same places, yes, THE POPE.

The first “cotton” stop was only a couple of days into the trip as we drove from Izmir on the Aegean Sea to Fethiye and the area that opened up into the Mediterranean, we stopped at a place called Pamukkale. “Pamuk” is the Turkish word for cotton and this place was given the name because the hot springs had turned much of the area as white as premium grade lint. But it wasn’t really the crop, it was calcium deposits.

As the days went along, we worked our way to Antalya and while there, a customer called the friend I was traveling with and asked if he could come by and look at something. We had a great visit with him, his niece and the proprietor at the local cafe. But I think a visit to a farm a few days later left a bigger impressions.

This family farm — a father, his son & daughter — seemed like so many I had been to in the US from the discussion. Topics included how to cover more land to be more efficient, selecting the crops and varieties that would best produce, what to do with such a dry summer, etc. The topic that was unique was how they had decided to be among the first to machine harvest cotton. The daughter was pivotal in some of these key decisions, reminding me of a few US farm families I know.

I’ve got to find a chance to go back there! Great people, great food and great cotton products… who could ask for more?  Oh yeah, great beaches — they have that too!

Have you ever been to Turkey?

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Lovin’ the start of the FIFA World Cup! The tourney may not be an obvious fit for an ag blog. But then again, this is an ag blog for fun, I don’t to follow anyone else’s rules. However, it is really easy for me to connect soccer and agriculture because for me, they are inherently tied for me.

Granted I knew about soccer and really appreciated the sport before I knew much about agriculture. I can still remember doing a big report about Pele in elementary school. By that time, he was an international superstar. For some reason, the sport resonated with me early on. Then in college I ended up friends with a lot of people who played soccer really well and found it a passion.

When I lived in New York, the country caught World Cup fever but my friends in NY were far more focused on baseball (go Yankees!)  As I moved to the Delta, I wondered if people would enjoy the sport and gladly found myself in the midst of other soccer fans.

Working in a global role, soccer became part of the casual conversation, knowing how different teams were doing. Now with friends scattered around the world, among the teams I enjoy following are lots of cotton-producing nations: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Greece, India, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Turkey. I’ve even got soccer paraphenalia from several of the countries, my favorite is the Ilhan Mansiz that I got during the 2002 World Cup. And I have friends in or from: England, Guatemala, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Russia too that rank high in the loyalty camps too.

I can’t recall how many friends have gotten together to watch matches, even in the middle of the night to watch. And the matches that allow some cotton friends to claim honor over others… those stick with me for a while! The quarterfinals match between Turkey and Brazil… A dozen or so of us were watching with a Turkish friend. The first time Brazil scored, a bunch of us pulled out Brazilian flags & cheered. GREAT practical joke! However, the respect between these countries and the general fun of trading stories builds community.

The buzz is beginning to pick up and no doubt the US-England match this weekend has gotten me started in the right way. Two of my cotton countries – South Africa and Mexico – tied and Argentina did well. So as you look at the schedule, if you want to know who I will pick for… Just think cotton thoughts, cause that likely rules my loyalty!

A few resources you may want to check out:

• ESPN’s World Cup blog includes a good bit of info including the TV schedule for those of us with US ESPN.
• FIFA (the international soccer organization)
• TechCrunch‘s tips on where to find everything World Cup 2010

And I feel I must acknowledge that I know VERY FEW soccer uniforms are made with cotton. I don’t have to hold a grudge. I just keep hoping George Costanza or someone else steps up and leads the change!

And if you’re watching the World Cup, who do you want to scream GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL for most often?

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