The recent blast of arctic air is growing ice on lakes and ponds over much of Iowa. Anglers are starting to get out for the popular early ice fishing season. Joe Larscheid, chief of fisheries for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR), says “Many of us can’t wait to get out on the ice each winter. Ice fishing is a fun, inexpensive activity for anglers of all ages to get outdoors and avoid cabin fever.” The DNR recommends a minimum of four inches of clear ice for fishing and at least five inches for snowmobiles and ATVs.

“Check ice thickness as you make your way to your favorite fishing spot,” Larscheid said. “Ice conditions change constantly and its thickness can vary across the lake. Trust your instincts – if the ice does not look right, don’t go out.” Early ice offers an excellent chance for success.  If fish are finicky, cut a series of holes and spend 15 minutes at each hole. Use small baits and light line.

Safety Tips on the Ice

• No ice is 100 percent safe.
• New ice is usually stronger than old ice.
• Don’t go out alone – if the worst should happen, someone will be there to call for help or to help rescue.
• Let someone know where you are going and when you will return.
• Check ice thickness as you go out – there could be pockets of thin ice or places where ice recently formed.
• Avoid off-colored snow or ice. It is usually a sign of weakness.
• The insulating effect of snow slows down the freezing process.
• Bring along these basic items to help keep you safe: hand warmers, ice cleats to help prevent falls, ice picks (wear around your neck) to help you crawl out of the water if you fall in, a life jacket, a floating safety rope, a whistle to call for help, a basic first aid kit and extra dry clothes including a pair of gloves.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — American farmers still working to get out their remaining soybeans after a weather-plagued harvest season are struggling to figure out what to do with a record crop now their traditionally dominant export market is largely closed. Usually by this point in the year, 100-car trains filled with North Dakota soybeans would be moving to ports on the West Coast destined for China. But this year is different, after China all but stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs . Fearful of economic failure, farmers are frantically trying to determine how to store a potentially 1 billion-bushel surplus until it can be sold at a decent price. Farmers have been mostly patient with Trump and his plans to realign trade deals to improve U.S. interests, but the loss of markets is hitting their bank accounts hard.

“As I’ve heard many people say, you can’t pay the bills with patriotism,” said Grant Kimberley, an Iowa farmer and the market development director for the Iowa Soybean Association. “You’ve got to have money and right now we as an industry are a little short on that because we’ve had a major hit in our number one market and it’s been reflected in a major drop in prices.” North Dakota farmers who sell at the current cash price of around $7.20 a bushel do so at a loss given that the cost of production is about $8.50. Trump has created a one-time $12 billion program to compensate for the loss in trade, and soybean farmers are to get the largest share of the money. But even with payments from that fund , which amount to about 82 cents a bushel this year, they still fall short of breaking even. Another 82 cents may be approved next year if a trade agreement isn’t reached, the USDA has said.

Farmers have been struggling for five years as the cost of land, fertilizer, chemicals and seed have remained high, but net income has fallen. Some who rent their land or have accumulated high debt could be forced out of farming by the crisis. “Individually, we’ve got some problems out there,” said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. “This squeeze will be enough to put a few farmers out of business.” Farmers produced a record U.S. harvest of 4.6 billion bushels this year, but the USDA reports exports to China are down 94 percent from a year ago since Chinese companies were ordered to stop buying American soybeans and find other suppliers. U.S. soybean farm organizations have cultivated other markets, including Egypt, Argentina and Iran, and boosted sales to the European Union and Mexico. But that doesn’t make up for the gap left by the loss of the Chinese market.

Meanwhile, more beans are going into storage than usual, and this could have an impact on the price of the 2019 crop. “The real pressure will come in February and March when farmers are trying to bring in some cash … to pay off bank loans and operating loans for the 2018 crop,” said Josh Gackle, who grows soybeans, corn, wheat and barley near Kulm, North Dakota. He said bankers could hesitate to finance another year if soybeans are still selling at unprofitable prices. As bin space fills up, some farmers are storing beans inside bunkers covered with plastic wrap to keep moisture out, while others are storing them outside, on the ground, in 200- to 300-foot-long plastic bags. “We don’t (usually) see bean piles on the ground here in our part of Illinois. Grain bagging is something that has always taken place in the background, but boy, you do see a lot of grain bags this fall,” said Austin Rincker, an Illinois soybean and corn farmer near Moweaqua, about 35 miles southwest of Springfield.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Most of the state’s corn and soybean crop have been harvested ahead of a snowstorm that blanketed much of southern and eastern Iowa. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Monday that 96 percent of Iowa’s corn crop had been harvested as of Sunday. While the percentage is even higher in northwest, north-central and central Iowa, 13 percent of corn remained to be harvested in southwest Iowa.

That statewide percentage is four days behind the five-year average. Iowa’s soybean harvest was 98 percent complete. That’s 12 days behind the five-year average.

Atlantic Parks and Recreation Dept. Director Seth Staashelm reports the roads inside Sunnyside Park are now closed for the season. The Park is still open to the public, but the roads are closed for the winter.

(Radio Iowa) — The Environmental Protection Commission has entered into a contract for a research project to examine if a wider view should be used to determine how things are thrown away. The D-N-R’s Tom Anderson says the law created in 1987 determined the success of what was recycled based on the weight of what went into landfills. “Weight is not necessarily the best measure of environmental impact. And it’s kind of what sustainable material management is looking at,” Anderson says, “”it’s looking at the environmental impacts from raw material extraction through the production, distribution, use and ultimately disposal.”

Anderson says the program created 30 years ago was appropriate for the time. “It was easy because all you needed was the weight — eventually all the landfills had scales — so the weight was an easy number to grasp. And then an easy number to use that and say we landfilled less than we did the previous year, our programs must be working,” according to Anderson. “That very well could be true, but environmentally we still don’t know if the actions we are doing here are better for the environment, or should we be doing alternative actions.”

He says looking beyond how much space something takes in the landfill could show that landfilling isn’t the best way to handle it. “If you look at it more holistically and look at it upstream so to speak — back to that raw material extraction — there may be more impacts to environment by recycling it than disposing it,” Anderson explains. Anderson says one example that has been studied is coffee containers — which can be metal cans, plastic cans or pouches. The costs for each container from when it was made to when it is thrown away were analyzed. He says you have energy and water and air emissions in the manufacture of the cans or pouches. And then when you look at distribution, the cans are heavier and bigger and the environmental impact is more because it takes more trucking to move them than it does the pouches.

He says all the factors showed them something. “You come to find that overall from start to finish the environmental impact is greater for the metal can than it is if you were to dispose of that pouch,” Anderson says. Anderson says the research project will establish a vision for Iowa waste management that considers environmental impacts and create a detailed plan to engage everyone in carrying out that vision. The effort will begin December 1st and Anderson says they hope to have it completed by September.

(Radio Iowa) — Thanksgiving celebrates the harvest season and this year the harvest includes a new crop that’ll be legally sold in Iowa for the first time. Medical marijuana products made from the plants grown in Iowa will be available for the first time starting December 1st. MedPharm Iowa’s Joe Kerner is the head cultivator of the crop and says it starts a lot like most gardens in the state. He says one difference is they grow their plants from cuttings and not seeds. “We just grow them up and we allow them to flower out. And with the process that allows us to select certain genetic lines that allows us to target either that T-H-C or the C-D-B (canabis oil) molecule,” Kerner explains.

Kerner has a degree in horticulture from Iowa State University and picked up more specific knowledge about marijuana from those who have been growing the plants in other states. He says a key job is keeping the plants fed. “We have a fertigation process that we use. That means we fertilize and water at the exact same time,” Kerner says. “And that’s going to vary throughout the plant’s life cycle, especially as it gets bigger.” Kerner says the marijuana grows in a highly controlled environment where they don’t have to worry about things like too much rain, or hail and windstorms like the average garden. But there are some things that they have to guard against. “We have to control for pests, whether that’s an insect or a mold or fungus — but due to the very strict environmental controls we have in place — we can really keep a good finger on that,” Kerner says.

The plants reach the flowering stage in 20 to 22 weeks and are then harvested to make the medical marijuana products. “We remove all the flower structures from the stem and then we grind them up and extract them. So, that way we can receive the oil and we can formulate with it,” he says.  Kerner says watching the vivid green plants grow is more interesting than you might think. “You can see changes, this is a really fast-growing plant it being a true annual,” Kerner says, “so it really helps with that visual reward I guess. We get to see our plans really change and develop.”

The processing plant is on the southwest edge of the downtown area of DesMoines and has several security features surrounding it.

(Radio Iowa) — A rising number of beginning farmers are seeking help with loans and other financial planning, according to a report from the Center for Rural Affairs. Wyatt Fraas, the center’s farm and community assistance director, says he advises most of those who are just starting out to apply for loans through the U-S-D-A’s Farm Service Agency.  “In the last few years, there’s been a great increase in the number of small and new farmers who’ve gotten into the business,” Fraas says. “The Farm Service Agency responded to that by offering what they call a ‘microloan’ up to $50,000. Before that, they were focused on the larger commodity operations.”

Those larger operations may’ve been working with sums from the hundreds of thousands into the millions of dollars. He says many of those beginning producers have been challenged lately by low commodity prices and the trade war. “If they’re looking strictly at commodity crops, it’s very difficult to make the cash flow work,” Fraas says. “The Farm Service Agency uses a running average for the prices that they’ll use in those cases, which in this situation works to the farmer’s advantage as far as qualifying for a loan.”

Fraas says it’s critical new producers create a blueprint for their operation that can be shared with the lender. “It’s helpful for beginners to work up a business plan, something that talks about where their business is going to go, how they’re going to run it and the cashflow parts of it,” Fraas says. “The lender may not want to see the entire business plan. They specifically want to see the finances.”

Fraas says any new farmer who’s looking for advice can contact the Center for Rural Affairs, based in Lyons, Nebraska.

(Radio Iowa) — The executive director of the Iowa Turkey Federation says Iowa growers are still feeling some hang-over effects from the 2015 Avian Influenza (AI) or bird flu outbreak that saw the loss of millions of birds. Gretta Irwin says turkey producers have been able to replenish their flocks, however the demand has been down. “That is partially just due to our lack of being able to sell some of our turkey products overseas. So whether is continues to be bans because of high path A-I from 201 — to markets just not opening up because when we had A-I they replaced turkey with other products — our industry is still trying to rebound from that and get back up on our feet.”

Iowa ranks eighth in the nation for turkey production, and fifth for turkey processing. Irwin says Iowa turkey products usually end up in fast-food deli chain stores, as opposed to the center of the table for Thanksgiving dinner. “The processing part of the industry in Iowa is really key to having a successful industry,” according to Irwin. “We have great facilities in Storm Lake Iowa and in West Liberty Iowa — and if you are stopping by a deli store like Jimmy John’s or Subway — you are enjoying an Iowa turkey.”

Irwin says the consumption of turkey has remained stagnant for the last few years. She says the turkey industry is looking at ways to build additional consumption beyond this signature turkey eating holiday. “The industry is really in need of some new product ideas and some new ways of serving turkey and sparking interest in the product again,” Irwin explains. “Yeah, it is something we work on 365 days in our industry, not just Thanksgiving, because it is a year-round protein.”

Iowa raises approximately 12 million turkeys each year.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer is releasing its fiscal year end financial report. Quad Cities-based John Deere is reporting a net income of 785-million dollars for the fourth quarter and two-point-three billion for the year. The quarterly earnings rose 54-percent from a year ago, while the fiscal year earnings are up almost 209-million dollars. Despite an ongoing slump in the ag sector due to still-low commodity prices and trade troubles, Deere says farm machinery sales in the Americas made solid gains. The company’s forecast for 2019 calls for net income of nearly $3.6 billion on sales gains of about 7-percent.

w/Kate Olson.

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