Attendees at the 70th annual Mid-South Farm & Gin Show, Feb. 25-26, are encouraged to take advantage of educational opportunities. The show will be held at the Renasant Convention Center, Memphis, Tenn.

Co-sponsored by Southern Cotton Ginners Association & Foundation and Delta Farm Press, the Mid-South Farm & Gin Show offers many seminars and workshops featuring industry experts.

The Ag Outlook seminars are held each year on Friday and Saturday morning beginning at 8:30 a.m. “Joe Nicosia and Richard Brock are mainstays of the Farm & Gin Show,” according to Tim Price, executive vice president of Southern Cotton Ginners Association. “We welcome them each year to provide outlooks for global cotton and grain markets. It’s an opportunity to hear Nicosia’s and Brock’s perspectives in one place.”

Ag Outlook Sessions  

Friday Feb. 25, 8:30 a.m. - Outlook for U.S. and World Cotton. Joe Nicosia, trading operations officer, and Head of the Cotton Platform, for Louis Dreyfus Company, executive vice president of Louis Dreyfus Company LLC., Cordova, Tenn. 

Ted Schneider, newly elected chairman of National Cotton Council will provide comments on cotton issues, and Congressman David Kustoff (R-Tenn., 8^th District) will bring a special welcome to attendees.

Saturday, Feb. 26, 8:30 a.m. - Grain Market Outlook/Marketing Strategies & Projections for 2022. Richard Brock, bounder, Brock Associates, Milwaukee, Wis.

Additional educational opportunities in 2022 include:

AgLaunch Startup Station, Friday, Feb. 25, 11 a.m. AgLaunch is bringing its Startup Station back to the Mid-South Farm and Gin Show for a fifth time. The Startup Station will host some of the most innovative ag tech entrepreneurs from across the country to showcase how their ideas will shape the future of food and agriculture. It serves as the culmination of Phase II of the AgLaunch365 programming, a farm-centric model that supports ag tech companies with real-world solutions addressing on-farm issues by connecting them to farmers.

National Cotton Council Farm Bill Seminar: Challenges and Opportunities with the Next Farm Bill, Friday, Feb. 25, 1 p.m. - Reece Langley, vice president, Washington Operations, National Cotton Council.

This seminar will provide an overview and outlook on the challenges and opportunities for the next farm bill that Congress is expected to develop in 2023.  It will include a discussion of the major policy and political drivers in farm policy development in the current budget and political environment.  This will also include an assessment of how the current focus on climate policy, along with the cotton industry’s U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol can be a positive influence for farm policy that will benefit U.S. cotton producers and the entire cotton supply chain.

Climate Friendly Products and Carbon Offsetting Friday, Feb. 25, 2:15 p.m. AgriCapture featuring John Farris, AgriCapture, and Larry McClendon, Marianna, Ark.

AgriCapture unlocks additional revenue streams for farmers and landowners through Climate Friendly certified product premiums and carbon offsetting projects. This presentation features unexplored opportunities available to landowner and farmer partners including AgriCapture Climate Friendly certifications for cotton, rice, and beef. On-farm carbon credit generation from soil enrichment projects create additional revenue and increase land value. Building on agricultural experience in the Mid-South, a personalized approach and regenerative farming expertise, AgriCapture creates solutions that make sustainable agriculture a win-win-win opportunity.  

Cottonseed Quality Endorsement Project: Protecting Cottonseed Quality – Clif Parks, President & CEO, and Brandon McDonald, Senior Policy Analyst, AgriLogic Consulting LLC, College Station, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 26, 11 a.m.  The Cottonseed Quality Endorsement program, currently in development by AgriLogic Consulting. The Endorsement is designed to provide coverage for decreases in cottonseed quality due to weather impacts. This seminar will review program details including how the Endorsement will work with Federal Crop Insurance programs.

Rice Marketing Seminar – Featuring Milo Hamilton, co-founder and senior agricultural economist of Firstgrain, Inc., Saturday, Feb. 26, 12:30 p.m.

Rice rules of thumb may not work so well in 2022. Is the price of rice shaking your world? Is the cost of growing it shaking your world? In mid-January beans are competitively priced to rice and may draw in rice acreage due to high nitrogen prices. But larger uncertainties loom in the way of higher or lower rice prices in 2022 from outside trends. This workshop looks at the rice price as trapped between uncertain input costs and other factors you may never have thought about before. Extreme volatility will affect your profitability in 2022. We will be there in Memphis to help you sort through your new crop rice price outlook.

4-H Chopped Meal Preparation Competition – Arkansas and Tennessee 4-H Club members, Saturday, Feb. 26, 1 p.m.

Like Chopped on cable television this competition will feature teams of 4-H students who will develop a recipe and meal from a “mystery box” of common food pantry items. A panel of judges will evaluate the meals created and announce the top three winners.

Price noted in previous years, FFA chapters gathered at the Farm & Gin Show to package nutritious meals for distribution through Mid-South Food Bank. “These meal packaging events were highly successful, and the students packaged thousands of meals,” Price said. He added that over the years, what was discovered is individuals who participate in food pantry distributions really want to know how to put together a healthy meal from the items they receive at the food pantry.

Show hours are Friday, Feb. 25, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 26, 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. More information is available on the Farm and Gin Show website.