The Cass County Board of Supervisors have approved a resolution pertaining to the construction of livestock confinement facilities within the County. The move came during the Board’s meeting Monday morning, in Atlantic. Auditor Dale Sunderman said it’s the same thing the board approved last year and in previous years, with the exception of the dates. Sunderman says basically if a person has plans to construct a livestock facility and a permit is required, the application must be reviewed by the Board. The Supervisors will evaluate the application using the Master Matrix created by Iowa Code.

The Board’s recommendation to the Iowa DNR may be based on the final score on the Master Matrix or on reasons other than the final score.

Jim Field speaks with Kate Olson, Program Coordinator for ISU Extension in Cass County, about the Master Gardner program that begins Jan. 15, 2013 in Atlantic.

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MISSOURI VALLEY, Iowa (AP) – A juvenile bald eagle that had suffered a broken wing and other injuries in south-central Nebraska will be released at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge that sits in both western Iowa and eastern Nebraska.  The Daily Nonpareil newspaper says Raptor Recovery Nebraska’s chapter in Omaha expects to free the bird between noon and 1 p.m. Saturday, near the visitor center.

The refuge straddles the Missouri River north of Omaha, sitting between Blair, Neb., to the west and Missouri Valley, Iowa, to the east.  Denise Lewis, of Raptor Recovery, says the female was found injured in the Grand Island, Neb., area. Lewis says the broken wing and soft-tissue injuries may have resulted from the bird flying into something or being grazed by a vehicle while feeding near a road.

Some Iowa farmers had a very rough 2012 due to the drought and it’ll translate to a more expensive 2013 for consumers. A report from the U-S Department of Agriculture predicts food prices will be rising in the months ahead. U-S-D-A economist Ricky Volpe says the big hike in livestock feed prices means beef, pork and chicken will cost more.  “We’re going to see strong food price inflation for a lot of animal-based products,” Volpe says. “That’s expected to happen relatively early in the year, in the first quarter or the first half of 2013.” Food prices rose about two-and-a-half percent this year and the agency predicts they’ll rise three-to-four percent in the year ahead.

Volpe says meat prices will go up initially, with many other items costing more by late summer.  “That’s when we can expect to see more significant impacts for all these more packaged, processed, shelf-stabled foods, things like soups, condiments and side dishes, and then even things like breakfast cereals and packaged breads,” Volpe says. “That’s where we’ll start to see the impacts of the drought happen a little bit later. Consumers are going to feel it more for those foods. It’ll be a little bit smaller but it will happen in the second half of 2013 and maybe even in 2014.”

Volpe says the effects of the summer-long drought will continue to have ripple effects in all grocery aisles. “We’ve seen, in the last couple of months, fluid milk prices ticking up,” Volpe says. “It does appear as if, for this food, the drought has really started to hit it. We always expected that fluid milk and dairy would be kind of a good bellwether of where the drought is headed because we’re looking at a food group that is not very storable and doesn’t require a lot of processing. Expect to see dairy products, this large category, on average go up about 4% in 2013 as a result of these higher feed prices.” The report says the price of milk and other dairy products could double if price supports are not addressed by Congress in a new Farm Bill by the end of the year.

(Radio Iowa)

Three Iowans who have devoted their lives to improving cattle and beef production in the state were honored during the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association annual meeting in December. Together, their work totals 125 years. Darrell Busby, of Oakland, was honored as the ICA 2012 Hall of Fame recipient.

Since Busby came to Iowa in 1980 as an Extension Beef Specialist, he has worked to provide a better understanding for producers of how what’s going on inside cattle can improve outcomes on the outside. As an extension specialist for 30 years, he collected in-depth growth and carcass data, and showed cattle producers how the information is useful in ‘cause and effect’ ways that impact their bottom line. Although he retired from Iowa State University in 2010, he continues to focus on collecting data about beef cattle as manager of the Tri-County Steer Carcass Futurity cooperative in southwest Iowa.

Lee Faris, of Mt. Ayr, was named the 2012 Outstanding Commercial Producer Award winner. Faris has been involved in cattle production for 40 years. He began his beef operation near Mt. Ayr when he purchased 27 head of three-year-old bred cows in 1973. Over time, he has grown that herd to more than 200 cows. Faris credits his success to a good health program for both breeding stock and calves, and keeping good records on cow production. In recent years, he has been able to document a 95% calf crop or better.  The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association and the Iowa Beef Breeds Council jointly selected Faris as the award winner for the Outstanding Commercial Producer Award. They also worked together to select the final recipient of producer awards.

And, Everett Shepherd of EJ Shepherd Charolais, Stuart, is the Seedstock Producer of the Year for 2013. His journey to focusing on Charolais cattle is much like the journeys he has taken across the country “looking for the right genetics.” Shepherd has been in the cattle business for 46 years, starting with a registered Angus herd, and then crossing them with Simmentals for 10 years in his commercial cow/calf operation. He gradually transitioned to purebred Charolais, and focused on seedstock production, providing quality bulls and heifers to commercial herds in Iowa, as well as the U.S. and Canada.

The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association represents more than 9,500 beef-producing families and associated companies dedicated to the future of Iowa’s beef industry. ICA’s mission is “Grow Iowa’s beef business through advocacy, leadership and education.”

ST. LOUIS (AP) – The snowstorm that pummeled the upper Midwest last week is helping ease dry conditions in Iowa but hasn’t done much to relax the overall grip of the worst U.S. drought in decades.  The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday shows that roughly 62 percent of the continental U.S. remains in some form of drought, unchanged from the previous week. That number has been above 60 percent largely since July.

Nearly 22 percent of the lower 48 states are in extreme or exceptional drought, the two worst categories. That also is unchanged from the previous week.  All of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota are in drought. But thanks to last week’s snow, the amount of Iowa in extreme or exceptional drought fell 9 percentage points to 32 percent.