A new alliance supporting credible science and funding for research in agriculture technology has been formed. Key players are Deere and Co., Dupont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and the Renewable Fuels Association.
The new alliance aims to advance the idea that agriculture is capable of supply the world with food, feed, fiber and fuel.
You immediately knew Jack Hunt was someone special, even if you’d never met him.
I first saw him a couple of years ago when he walked into a local real estate meeting, frail and with the aid of a cane. Immediately, a literal who’s who of Wichita commercial agents flocked to him like moths to a flame.
Hunt, 86, who died Tuesday, was known for a lot of qualities, but none more so than his resourcefulness, as recounted by his friend, fellow commercial Realtor Rod Stewart.
Hunt, Stewart and their friends took a two-RV vacation 32 years ago to Santa Fe, N.M.
The men were in one RV, the wives in another, when a group of machete-wielding locals decided they were going to invade the womens’ RV.
One of the locals raised his machete, Stewart said, and knocked on the door, only to be confronted by the smallish Hunt, carrying a 9mm handgun.
“Don’t make me ruin my vacation,” Hunt warned the intruders.
The door-knocker complied, throwing his machete on the ground and telling Hunt, “Please don’t shoot me, crazy grandpa.” Hunt kept the machete, Stewart said, had it bronzed and displayed it above the bar of his Wichita home.
That, Stewart said, was Jack Hunt in a nutshell. Read more about Hunt, his career and his influence on Wichita commercial real estate in Friday’s Eagle.
Entrepreneurship, in a nutshell, is identifying an underserved part of the retail market and then supplying it with value in a product.
Simple-sounding, but a moving target as 80 percent of all entrepreneurs fail, according to Wichita entrepreneurship guru Fran Jabara. But not the Steven family at Spangles, whose growth continues to shatter company records.
Dale and Craig Steven’s idea has stood the test of time: Fresh, quality food at a below-market price. WAY below market if you’ve dropped $15 or more on lunch recently in Wichita.
The idea is blended adroitly with a heavy dose of marketing that – love it or hate it – keeps Spangles at the front of consumer minds.
At a time when retailers in all sectors – especially casual dining restaurants - are being pinched by out-of-control energy prices, only the strongest prosper. That strength in tough economic times is found in value, Jabara said.
May wasn’t a particularly good month for commercial real estate prices, which fell according to this article from LoopNet News.
Interestingly, the commercial market continues to prosper in Wichita. Most agents are reporting a shortage of Class A commercial space, which limits the region’s ability to attract top-flight manufacturers and help local companies grow. Look for growth in speculative Class A building in Wichita over the second half of the year.
It appears that some of those pesky oil speculators have decided to cash out of the big oil futures crap game, according to MSNBC.
Oil continues its rapid fall, down more than $20 over the past several days – despite some of the traditional factors that have triggered mass hysteria and big price run-ups on the trading floor like hurricanes, threats against pipeline security and the like.
While at the same time, what appeared to be bi-partisan action in Congress to crack down on speculators has been bogged down in a procedural squabble.
Employers, perhaps mine in particular, may wonder about productivity when they see e-mails in inboxes like “Take this quiz to find out what kind of sports car you are!” Or, “Celebrities caught without makeup!” Those are just two that made it into mine today.
Not exactly work related, of course. But they’re certainly fun little breaks that make a deadline-filled afternoon a little less stressful.
In case you’re wondering, I’m apparently a Lamborghini Murcieglago. And the quiz says that in a world full of sheep, I’m a raging bull. A few of my interview subjects surely would agree.
A market analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute frustratingly predicts that health care costs will continue to outpace the rate of inflation next year.
Its report, called “Behind the numbers: Medical cost trends for 2009,” notes that employers will rely on prevention and disease management programs to temper costs in 2009 rather than shifting higher levels of cost-sharing onto workers.
Among their reasons:
Only 38 percent of employers surveyed said they expected to increase cost-sharing through plan design changes. Wellness programs have become commonplace — two-thirds of employers are using them, and nearly half say they are somewhat effective at reducing costs. Wellness programs aren’t merely a cost-reduction tactic. Employers said these initiatives were nearly equally effective at boosting productivity, improving employee loyalty and demonstrating corporate loyalty.
Many Wichita employers are embracing wellness programs. Where does your company stand on this? Is it worth the effort?
JWink, a blog reader who likes commenting on our posts, wonders why other people aren’t commenting more. And one of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless, whined about this very thing just yesterday.
I know there are lots of you out there reading Business Casual because you comment on it to me personally (thanks for all the support over my cable woes, by the way), so I would encourage you to start commenting here, too. We’d like this to be an interactive forum. Tell us what you like and what you could do without. Unless, of course, it’s something I’ve written, in which case keep it to yourself!
The term “banking crisis” has been applied to the current state of the nation’s biggest banks, which have been reporting losses in the billions for the past several quarters, including Wachovia’s announcement today that it lost $9 billion and will shed thousands more jobs.
But is it really a banking crisis when other, albeit smaller, banks are reporting second quarter profits?
Take Commerce Bank, for example. Last week it said profits increased in the second quarter by nearly 3 percent.
And today UMB Bank said it saw its profits increase 18 percent over the prior year’s quarter.
So I ask, is it really a crisis?
Or are the woes of the nation’s biggest banks being broadly applied to the entire industry?
I went to lunch with the owner of a construction-related company today. He was a hoot. We flipped for who would buy. Before he was even done flipping I knew I’d lost. Was I taken? Still not sure. But he’s clearly a gambler.
When I mentioned that I’m heading to Vegas Thursday, he pulled out a wad of cash and peeled a crisp $100 bill from the bottom. “Put in on black,” he said.
Not sure how many $100s he had in the stack, but I left lunch thinking I’m clearly in the wrong business.
A reader of a blog called the Consumerist wrote in to ask an interesting question: Should AT&T be advertising the iPhone 3G as “twice as fast” in Wichita when the 3G network is not available in Wichita?
The person pointed out that an ad that ran in The Eagle touted the iPhone’s speed but didn’t mention that the network isn’t available here:
It may not seem like a big deal to some of us that are aware that the 3g coverage of ATT is limited and know to check the coverage first, but there is no guarantee that the good folks at the ATT store will let potential customers in on this, and (again) nowhere on the advertisement does it say that ATT’s 3g coverage is quite limited and not available anywhere near the newspaper’s reader’s area.
I have to admit, I love a good gadget and might have considered buying an iPhone if I weren’t still in the first year of my two-year Verizon contract. And I don’t know if I would have researched the iPhone enough to know the network isn’t available here.
I’d be interested to know if anyone bought one without knowing and regrets it. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal, and I imagine the 3G network will be here soon enough.
I regularly get E-mails of some of the best of commentary on issues that I follow regularly, which includes the price of oil and what’s causing today’s astronomical prices. The column I just read is so on point that I wanted to share. It’s written by John Hanchette, a professor at St. Bonaventure University who is also a Pulitzer Prize winning national correspondent, a founding editor of USA Today and a Gannett Top 10 reporter of the past 25 years.
Happy reading.