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CLICK HERE for the latest market quotes from the Iowa Agribusiness Network!
CLICK HERE for the latest market quotes from the Brownfield Ag News Network!
(Radio Iowa) – Pheasant hunters will hit Iowa’s forests and fields starting tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 8 o’clock, shortly after sunrise. Todd Bogenshutz, a wildlife biologist with the D-N-R in Boone, is predicting a busy morning as the forecast calls for a sunny fall day for much of the state. “We’re expecting a lot of hunters out. We had the highest numbers we’ve had in several years last year, partly due to COVID,” Bogenshutz says. “We’re expecting the same this year as (pheasant) counts are basically unchanged from a year ago.” Based on the agency’s roadside counts, northwest Iowa looks particularly promising for pheasant populations this year, while southeast Iowa may be lesser, though he says “they average out.”
Iowa’s growing seasons are wrapping up just as hunting season begins, which Bogenshutz says is ideal. “Crop harvest is well underway,” he says. “Last I saw, like 80-90 percent of the beans are out statewide and corn is up over 50, maybe 60 percent. When the crops are out when the season opens, that usually makes the birds easier to find, they don’t have as many places to hide.” Bogenshutz says there are some key rules to always follow during the hunt.
“The requirements of your pheasant and quail hunting is that you have to have at least one article of 50% or more blaze orange on your person,” Bogenshutz says. “That could be a hat, a vest, a coat or sweatshirt, anything that’s at least 50% blaze orange because we want everybody to be safe.” When hunting in groups, he says it’s vital to make a plan and follow it. Iowa’s pheasant season runs through January 10th. Learn more at www.iowadnr.gov.
Atlantic’s Joaquin Wailes and Corning’s Joey Oathoudt are making final preparations to compete this weekend on a national stage in Branson, Missouri at the Bass Cat Big Bass Zone Junior Championship, presented by Bassmasters. Wailes a freshman at Atlantic High School and Oathoudt a senior at Southwest Valley nabbed the biggest 5 bass limit at the state level, which propels them to the BBZ JC Finals this Saturday, Oct 30th on Lake Taneycomo. They will compete against 54-state championships caliber anglers in the competition for the biggest bass, with the top prize being a Bass Cat boat and scholarships.
Over the last month both anglers have worked extremely hard studying contour lines, water conditions, and waypoints on Lake Taneycomo to figure out best spot to reel in the biggest Bass. In September they traveled to Branson to pre fish the lake to obtain vital information about the lake to help them be prepared for this weekend’s tournament. “I am excited and pump to go compete,” explained Wailes. “This is a huge tournament and it’s a lot different than the local tournaments I’ve been in. I am glad we had an opportunity to pre fish the lake ahead of time because I will know how to adjust to the changing fishing conditions. I want to thank all our sponsors, my boat caption Rob Clausen and my family for supporting my fishing addiction.“
On Saturday Wailes has been paired with an angler from Pennsylvania and will be the 4th boat to launch at the start of the tournament. Oathoudt is paired with an angler from South Carolina and will launch 20th. The tournament is still a solo competition, and the competitors will spend the day fishing, as they take turns deciding where the boat goes, with one competitor steering it in the morning, and the other angler steering it in the afternoon.
“It will be a great experience and I feel honored to go to represent my family and sponsors at this once-in-a-lifetime event,” Oathoudt said. “I want to thank Bill Siemantel with the BBZ, my grandpa for finding this opportunity. It is going to be a grind, so I am going to focus on tight lines and good hook sets to reel in the biggest bass I can.”
Both anglers are members of the newly formed Southwest Iowa Fishing Team where they fished with other area student anglers. “I am so excited for the boys they definitely put in the work and time to earn their spot in the BBZJC,” Bob Harris the coach of SWIFT said. In our first year as a fishing team, we have had great success with a two SWFT high school teams placing 20th at the TBF/SAF World Championships and 50th in the National Championships, and our junior fishing 4th at the Junior World Championships. We have some great student anglers in Iowa, and I would also like to congratulate Jake Oathoudt and Owen Hoover who also competed hard in the BBZJC tournament but didn’t qualify for the finals.”
On Saturday at 3 pm CST be sure to watch the live weigh-in from Missouri and see who will become the next BBZ JC World Finals Champion. See it live on the Bassmaster Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/bass). Good Luck boys!
(Altoona, Iowa) – Iowa cattle producers have an opportunity to weigh in on cattle industry topics of concern at the Iowa Cattle Industry Leadership Summit and Annual Meeting. This year’s event will be held December 15 through 16 at Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa.
Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter Shinn will kick off the event on December 15. His presentation, “Agriculture & National Defense: Funding & Conflict Management,” stems from an extensive career in the U.S. Air Force and agriculture industry. Attendees will also have an opportunity to sit in on educational sessions, covering time sensitive topics such as carbon and tax reform. A full trade show and opportunities for networking will feature new products and solutions for cow-calf and feedlot producers. The program will conclude on December 16 with a closing session, and the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association and Iowa Beef Industry Council annual meetings.
Leadership Summit is the culmination of our formal policy development process. Members are encouraged to participate in policy committee meetings, which provide the opportunity to review expiring resolutions and introduce new policy priorities for the Association. Decisions made by members in the policy committee meetings will be presented to the board for ratification at the annual meeting. Based on feedback we’ve received over the past year, we expect policy discussions to center on price discovery and transparency, beef labeling regulations, and tax reform.
For more information, click HERE. To register for the Iowa Cattle Industry Leadership Summit visit www.iacattlemen.org. Registration is highly encouraged, and early bird rates will be offered through Friday, December 3. Hotel accommodations can be made online by following the link and entering the delegate code and password listed below. To receive the group rate, you will need to make reservations prior to Sunday, November 14.
(Ames, Iowa) – The latest Iowa Drought Monitor map was released this (Thursday) morning. It shows continued improvement in the drought conditions, statewide. Locally, much of Montgomery, Cass and Adair Counties remain “Abnormally Dry,” while nearly two-thirds of Madison County is Abnormally Dry. Across Interstate 80, most of Audubon County is experiencing the same conditions, while small parts of Guthrie and Dallas Counties range from Abnormally Dry to mostly Moderately Dry.
Severe Drought conditions continue to affect parts or all of 10 counties in central/north central Iowa. Across the Midwest, much of the southern and central portions of the Midwest received heavy precipitation, with a band of 2 to locally 4 inches measured from Iowa and northeast Missouri to southern Michigan and northwest Ohio. Areas to the south and north had 0.5 to 2.0 inches, except for a dry spot in southeast Minnesota to central Wisconsin and a dry swath in central Missouri. The northern half of Minnesota received no precipitation.
(Radio Iowa) – Thanksgiving is four weeks away, after which many Iowans start decorating for the holidays, but finding the perfect Christmas tree could be a challenge this year with a developing tree shortage. David Pierce, past-president of the Iowa Christmas Tree Association, says some tree farms may be having trouble this season due to the long-running drought. “We’re a little low. We had strong demand last year due to other events like the weather, a little bit of deer damage,” Pierce says. “Our supplies are a little bit tighter this year than we would like but we’ve been here before.”
Pierce runs Honey Creek Timbers in southeast Iowa, near Morning Sun, and has a few thousand white pines and Scotch pines on his acreage. Last year’s derecho destroyed untold thousands of native hardwoods and shade trees statewide, but the powerful wind storm didn’t cause much trouble for evergreens. The heat and the dry weather, though, that can be a problem. “The shortage that you’re probably seeing the most is on the fraser fir. That appears to me to be the most dramatic,” Pierce says. “Some of our growers in the northern part of the state, where it’s a little bit cooler, grow those. We’re not able to because it’s a little hot here in the summer.”
A Blue Spruce Christmas Tree (Photo from ISU Extension)
Many clients seek out the fraser firs and Pierce says he’ll truck them in from out of state, if they can’t be sourced nearby. Perhaps a worse threat to the industry than drought is the march of time, as growers with decades of experience in the business are retiring. “We’ve seen a steady decline in those. It would probably mirror what’s happening with other older-generation farmers,” Pierce says. “But this year, we’ve seen a nice influx of new members, people who have decided they’d like to try to plant some trees, so we’re encouraged by that.”
It can take seven to eight years, he says, to grow an eight-foot-tall pine tree from a sapling. The association says eight types of Christmas trees grow well in Iowa: Scotch pine, white pine, Fraser fir, blue spruce, Douglas fir, concolor fir, balsam fir and Canaan fir. To find a grower near you, visit https://www.iowachristmastrees.com and click the “Find a Farm” button.
(Atlantic, Iowa) – Cass County Naturalist Lora Kanning reports the Conservation Department’s final, “Building Better Birders” program will be in the form of a two day workshop format. You’re invited to join Kelly McKay from ‘Building Better Birders,’ as he shares about Sparrow, and Waterfowl Bird Identification. The event takes place November 19th, at Outdoor Educational Classroom near Massena.
It will start with Waterfowl ID at 5pm (you can bring your dinner with you), and includes an Owl Prowl, starting at 7-p.m. Friday, Nov. 19th. Kanning says participants will hike and try to call in various species of Owls that may be in the park that night. Saturday, November 20th at 8am, is at the Outdoor Educational Classroom near Massena, and features a Sparrow ID, with a birding hike to follow at 10-a.m.
At 11-a.m. that day, Iowa Bluebird Conservationists will do a presentation on bluebird basics and their efforts. There will be a break for a catered lunch for $10, in support of our Friends of the Outdoor Classroom. At 1pm the final program on a Christmas Bird Count Marathon will conclude the workshop. Funding for the program is provided by the Resource Enhancement and Protection – Conservation Education Program (REAP – CEP). The workshop will be conducted by Kelly McKay (BioEco Research and Monitoring Center), with assistance from Mark Roberts (Clinton County Conservation) and Brian Ritter (Nahant Marsh Education Center).
Pre-Register by November 15th . Call 769-2372 or email to sign up lkanning@casscoia.us Take Hwy 148 south of Massena, Turn Left on Tucson Rd, Follow it East for about two miles, and then a right hand turn into the parking lot. Kanning says you’re welcome to attend one or all of the programs, but they are asking for your preregistration for Saturday, Nov. 20th, so they know how many to expect for Lunch. She says “We look forward to seeing everyone for the final weekend.”
(Radio Iowa) – A Cedar Rapids ethanol plant will be part of a new effort to create environmentally friendly jet fuel. Archer Daniels Midland announced it has signed an agreement with a biofuel company to produce jet fuel at its dry mills in Cedar Rapids, Columbus, Nebraska, and Decatur, Illinois. The company in an announcement Monday says it would use 900 million gallons of ethanol — or about half of its production capacity at the plants — to produce 500 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
The company says the agreement is part of its plan to produce low carbon-footprint hydrocarbon fuels. Production is expected to begin between 2025 and 2026.
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