Andy's Angle

One of my guilty pleasures in life is watching the hit television show Dancing with the Stars. Now in its 11th season, the American version of British sensation Strictly Come Dancing pairs a handful of television, music, and miscellaneous "celebrities" of varying levels of fame and fortune with professional dancers in a quasi-reality show style competition. The show is fairly well produced, and while Tom Bergeron has yet to find a co-host who can match his talent (he's particularly well-suited to this show, in my opinion), it's a good production that I don't mind giving a few hours every few months.

This week ABC announced the cast list for the upcoming season. Along with Knight Rider and Baywatch Star David Hasselhoff, Brady Bunch matriarch Florence Henderson, and Superbowl-winning quarterback Kurt Warner, Bristol Palin will make her dancing debut on the show. While I found the cast list to be, by and large, a pretty good offering this year, I am amazed and more or less disgusted at the responses I read on one Conservative blog this morning:

"I appreciate Bristol's work combating teen pregnancy. But this doesn't do anything for the cause of teen pregnancy, and it certainly doesn't do anything for conservatives," TownHall blogger Jillian Bandes declared. Who said her appearance would do either? Let's face the facts:

1. Bristol is famous because her mother is famous.
2. Bristol is famous because she, like tens of thousands of teenagers, made some poor choices relative to sexual activity.
3. Bristol never claimed to be a Conservative leader or activist.
4. Bristol's life and lifestyle are, by and large, none of our damn business.

With that in mind, who exactly is Jillian Bandes to declare that Bristol's appearance has anything to do with either the "cause" of teen pregnancy (I'll skip over what I'm assuming was an inadvertent double-entendre re: the "cause" of teen pregnancy) in the first place? Nothing steams my grits any more than when some self-appointed arbiter of who's "conservative enough" steps up to denigrate someone for not meeting their phantom standards.

In the case of young Bristol, I think it's perfectly fine that she's taken on the challenge of entering a televised dance competition. At the end of the day, ABC thinks she (and the other cast members) will make for compelling television, and that's what matters, I suppose. Some talking head's opinion of Bristol's participation is largely irrelevant.

This video features my friends Sam & Laura Sutherly, who farm near Troy, Ohio. This is a great example of how to introduce folks to the people who raise and produce our food. Great work Sutherly family!

I'm working late from my hotel room in Fishers, Indiana, our first stop on the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. Day 1 took our band of merry men and maidens from Columbus to this suburb of Indianapolis via a dozen or so different routes across Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana. Along the way, scouts sampled corn and soybean fields every 15-20 miles, for a total of just under 90 different data points in Ohio alone.

The weather this year is perfect for the Crop Tour. The dews weren't as heavy, they burned off fairly quickly, the humidity wasn't as oppressive in the middle of the day, and by and large a scout didn't necessarily have to break a sweat to get the job done. This is my kind of Tour weather! For our group, which travelled due North from Columbus through Morrow, Crawford, Richland and Huron counties, then due West through Seneca, Wyandot, Hancock, Allen, and Van Wert counties, we saw some of the best corn in the state.

The crop is fairly well advanced, though as most of us already knew, there are basically two different crops to evaluate: the one planted in roughly the third week of April, and the one planted sometime after Mothers' Day. The early corn is by and large better than 200 bushels if it was managed anywhere near good. Folks who kept weed pressures at a minimum, which nearly all did, had no trouble getting North of 180-190 bushels per acre. In the one field we surveyed sub-150, pressures from Giant Ragweed (Glyphosate Resistant?) were significant, and I would presume to be a contributing factor. In the one field we sampled in Van Wert county at 155bu/ac, dryness was a key factor, as was early wetness. Late planting followed by dry weather is a recipe for crop stress.

The ProFarmer average for Ohio on 89 samples is 165.60 bu/ac, up 3.6% over last year's Tour average of 159.73, and well above the three year average Tour yield of 150.93.

Soybeans, on the other hand, were mostly later planted, and still very much growing and setting pods. The first samples we counted, from Morrow to Huron counties, were fairly mature, and set pods in the 1,200-1,500 pods/square yard range. As we turned West, however, the beans in many parts were still blooming, and had set perhaps 400-800 pods per yard. These beans were very, very healthy, and with the right amount of precipitation, should put on some additional pods and have great yield potential. If the remainder of the season is dry, however, all bets are off.

Several readers of my ongoing Tour coverage asked questions about soybean yield and corn kernel depth. I tackled these issues in a video on my Facebook page. My page also features pictures from the day's events for your viewing enjoyment. We'll have my day's interviews on BuckeyeAg.com first thing in the morning, and I'll have more from Bloomington, Illinois tomorrow night.

My thanks once again this year to Pioneer Hi-Bred International for sponsoring ABN Radio's coverage of the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. Feel free to send me your questions, and stay tuned to all the above listed sources for the latest in how the crop looks across the Eastern Corn Belt!

One of the great things about moving our studios to The Ohio State University a couple of years ago is the unprecedented access we have to the University, and likewise that friends and guests have to us. We're often asked to host student groups like the Ohio Pork Youth Leadership Institute last month, and today the Ohio FFA Association's State Officer Team. The State FFA Officers recently (at the behest of my friend and fellow social media "agvocate" Dan Toland) entered the Twitterverse. In our conversations regarding social media, I opined that my involvement with Facebook and Twitter have taken a great deal of the time I previously dedicated to writing this blog.

I'm presuming that I'm not the only person to notice this phenomenon, but as I logged in here, I noted that I didn't write a single post during the Ohio State Fair. In previous years I seem to recall writing throughout the Fair about the various shows and events underway. One possible explanation, of course, is that I missed more of the Fair this year than I have at any point in the past decade due to my 20 hours of classes at Ohio State... The other possibility, of course, is that I shared my observations and activities via Facebook/Twitter.

So, what say you? What is the role of the blog relative to the whole Social Media sphere? Am I just a slacker, or are my pithy comments best contained in 140 characters or less?

I remember playing this game when I was a kid in school, and it was the coolest thing in technology at the time. Now there's a "trailer" for a "film adaptation" of the popular educational game. It's all a parody, of course, but it's the funniest thing I've seen this morning: