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Sunflower Briefs

Friday, December 1, 2017
filed under: Sunflower Briefs

NSA Receives Specialty Crop Grants
       The North Dakota Department of Agriculture has awarded the National Sunflower Association $118,996 to apply genomic tools to accelerate breeding for disease resistance in confection sunflower. In addition, $55,452 was awarded to North Dakota State University for optimizing the deployment of foliar fungicides for managing Sclerotinia head rot in confection sunflower. The money is a part of 29 grants the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service approved, totaling over $2.2 million, to promote the development, cultivation, production and sales of specialty crops in North Dakota.

Markell Named Communicator of the Year
       The North Dakota State University Agriculture Communication Department and North Dakota chapter of the Association for Communication Excellence have named Sam Markell Communicator of the Year. Markell, a plant pathologist at NDSU Extension, was honored for his expertise and professionalism in delivering educational programs and information to the public. Markell joined NDSU Extension in 2007 and has led several efforts, including the development of disease diagnostic cards that provide producers with disease management information for a number of crops. These cards are not just helping North Dakota farmers; the sunflower cards have been translated into Chinese.

December Sunflower Meetings in Kansas
       The Kansas Sunflower Commission and the High Plains Sunflower Committee will be holding two informational meetings in December. The meetings are targeted at producers and agribusiness professionals seeking more information about growing sunflower. Meetings will be held on December 7 in Salina, Kan., and December 8 in Wellington, Kan. Find more information at www.kssunflower.com.

Ownership Change at The Money Farm
       Mike Krueger, one of the co-founders of Agri-Mark in 1982 and the founder and owner of The Money Farm since 2002, will retire at the end of January 2018. Krueger has sold The Money Farm to Luke Swenson. Swenson, who grew up on a farm near Kindred, N.D., has worked at The Money Farm for the past seven years and was a commodity broker in Iowa prior to that. The Money Farm provides marketing information and advice to farmers and others associated with agriculture. The company also provides commodity brokerage services and farm management software for clients.
       Krueger has written marketing articles for The Sunflower magazine since the mid-1980s. He plans to continue writing and also consulting part time for World Perspectives, a Washington, D.C.-based firm.