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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) – The harvest remains ahead of schedule in Iowa despite rainy weather. The latest U-S-D-A crop report says with all the rain farmers only had about three days last week that were suitable for fieldwork. But the harvest that got started early is still ahead of the normal pace. The report finds 11 percent of the corn is harvested — that’s five days ahead of average. Fifteen percent of the soybean crop has been pulled from the fields — that’s one day ahead of average. Seventy-five percent of the corn condition is rated good to excellent, while 74 percent of the beans are rated in the same condition.
(Radio Iowa) — President Trump says he’s coming to Iowa soon to make an announcement. Sources tell Radio Iowa Trump will be in Council Bluffs on October 9th and he’s likely to announce the E-P-A will allow year-round sale of gasoline with a 15 percent ethanol blend. Trump mentioned his upcoming trip to Iowa as he announced some details of the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement.
He says the deal is “a very big deal” for farmers — and exports of wheat, poultry, eggs and dairy products — including ice cream — should increase to both neighboring countries. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst was among those who gathered today (Monday) in the White House Rose Garden for the president’s news conference and Trump mentioned Ernst twice during his remarks.
(Radio Iowa) — A ceremony will be held at the Iowa Capitol early this (Monday) afternoon to formalize Taiwan’s purchase of nearly four million metric tons of soybeans from Iowa and Minnesota. The trade delegation from Taiwan signed documents in Washington, D.C. Thursday and made stops in Iowa this weekend. On Sunday, they visited a farm in northwest Iowa, east of Hinton. Republican Congressman Steve King arranged for tours of farms near Nevada and Fort Dodge, too. “I wanted them to see, just take the ride across the landscape because I’ve learned this from our foreign visitors in the past that I’ve brought here in the past that they come from places where it’s just hard to conceive of the idea of horizon-to-horizon row crop production, really, without a break,” King says. “….Let ’em know you can buy all the grain you can buy and we’re not going to run out here in Iowa.”
King says he and his staff have traveled to Taiwan several times to tout trade and he predicts even more U.S. soybeans will be shipped to Taiwan in the future. “That pipe of exports to China — and I’ll just use it as a pipe size — that’s been shrunken considerably because of the trade protectionism that China has slapped on especially our beans and our pork, but also other products,” King says. “…To replace one big pipe to China we have to replace it with a lot of smaller pipes to places like Taiwan and other countries.” According to King, the U.S. is now providing nearly 80 percent of Taiwan’s soybean supply. The move is likely part of Taiwan’s effort to strengthen ties to the U.S. as China increases pressure on Taiwan, which it claims as part of Chinese territory.
The stronger our relationships are with Taiwan — the business relationships, the friendship relationships, the trade that goes back and forth, the young people that come to the United States to be educated here and our Americans that go there to study — all of those things build stronger bonds,” King says, “and those stronger bonds are a component of the national defense for Taiwan.”
King spoke at last Thursday’s signing ceremony in Washington, D.C. He is not among the dignitaries scheduled to speak at the ceremony this (Monday) afternoon in Washington, D.C. A trade delegation from Minnesota was in Taiwan in August to tout the pending deal.
Tree stand accidents can happen to deer hunters regardless of skill level or experience and result in serious injury or even death. Unfortunately, in nearly every case, these incidents were preventable. To help prevent injuries, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, in partnership with Tree Stand Safety Awareness, is encouraging hunters to practice the ABC’s of Tree Stand Safety:
“Hunters should take tree stand safety seriously, every time you hunt from, hang, or move a tree stand. By performing these three simple steps, tree stand users can virtually eliminate their risk of falling to the ground as the majority of falls occur outside the stand,” said Megan Wisecup, hunter education administrator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Nationally, the estimated number of falls from tree stands requiring emergency room visits decreased by 28 percent in 2017. In Iowa last year, there were four tree stand incidents and all resulted in injury. “That’s a significant, positive move on the tree stand injury prevention front but we still have room for improvement,” Wisecup said.
An estimated 60,000 hunters will be heading to the timber in the next few weeks as Iowa’s archery deer season gets underway today (Oct. 1st). Forest wildlife research biologist Jim Coffey with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said hunters who spend time on preseason scouting should improve their chance for success later this fall. “Deer are habitual animals – their traditional trails now will be traditional trails later this fall and with all the rain over much of the state hunters have the opportunity to see the deer trails in the mud,” he said. “Even though food is plentiful now, hunters should still pattern the food sources and bedding areas.”
One food source deer will likely key on is acorns from white oak trees and Coffey said the white oaks in southern Iowa had an excellent crop this year. “Once you identify hunting areas, take advantage of the leaves being on the trees, knowing that once the leaves fall it will look a lot different to both hunters and the deer. It’s that time in the stand observing nature, seeing what makes the squirrels start barking or what it means when blue jays are calling that improves your skills as a hunter,” Coffey said. “Check your shooting lanes from both the ground and from the tree stand because it will look a lot different depending your angle.”
Coffey also advised hunters to inspect their tree stand and safety harness before heading out. “Make sure to check the straps and tighten the bolts on the tree stand and try on the safety harness to make sure it still fits. If it’s worn out or no longer fits, get it replaced. No one wants their hunt to end because they fell out of a tree stand,” he said. Part of preseason scouting includes preparing for a successful harvest. If planning to hunt in early October, or anytime the temperature is warm, hunters should bring large chunks of ice to put in the deer cavity to cool the meat. Freezing gallon milk jugs with water is a method often used by hunters. Then, get it to the locker as soon as possible.
Bow hunters harvested an estimated 23,000 deer in 2017. Iowa’s archery deer season is Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 and Dec. 17 to Jan. 10, 2019. Hunters who harvest a deer are required by law to report it by midnight of the day after the deer is recovered. Harvest may be reported online at www.iowadnr.gov, by phone at the toll-free number printed on the harvest report tag or through a license vendor during their regular business hours.
(Radio Iowa) — Plant researchers at Iowa State University are working together with counterparts at the University of Florida, Wisconsin and Washington State University to improve the breeding of a summer favorite. I-S-U agronomy professor Thomas Lubberstedt has worked on improving field corn varieties and says sweet corn research has some new variables. “You’re very much focused on eating quality traits besides the general yield and resistance and stress tolerance traits — so it’s adding to the complexity of finding the best varieties,” Lubberstedt explains.
Roswell Garst developed the first hybrid field corn in Iowa back in the 1930’s and Lubberstedt says there have been years of developments and thousands of dollars spent on improving field corn. Sweet corn has not gotten as much attention in part because its production is small compared to the millions of bushels of field corn grown each year. “Field corn has a much bigger market because it has a lot of acreage, which means it’s (sweet corn) not that big of a business, which means the breeding programs involved in sweet corn breeding are usually smaller — the budget is smaller than field corn — that makes it a little more difficult to deal with more traits,” according to Lubberstedt.
He says finding the right tasting sweet corn varieties is still done in an old-fashioned way. “Currently that still has to be done by persons ultimately who do bite tests or who really taste it. That is part of this project to find methods that can quantify taste ultimately, and at least pre-qualify the most promising candidates,” Lubberstedt says.
Lubberstedt’s research is trying to use technology from field corn that more quickly produces inbred lines of corn that create the hybrid varieties. It is hoped they can incorporate the good tasting qualities needed for sweet corn into those quick breeding methods. “There are groups in the project focusing on trying to replace taste panels by biochemical methods that can be applied instead and help to predict which of those plants have likely the best tastes that correlates what has been found in test panels,” Lubberstedt says.
Those chemical methods could then be used to incorporate the taste into the faster breeding process. The researchers are sharing a four-year seven-point-three million dollar grant from the U-S Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
The smelly reality is that cows will always pass gas. But if farmers had more access to seaweed, cow flatulence might just stink a little less for the planet. That’s the thesis of a New England-based aquaculture company which is launching a drive to become the worldwide leader in an emerging effort to thwart climate change by feeding seaweed to cows.
The concept of reducing livestock emissions by using seaweed as feed is the subject of ongoing scientific research, and early results are promising. University of California researchers have found that cows that eat seaweed appear to emit less methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, when they belch and pass gas.
But one of the big challenges to implementing the seaweed solution is getting enough of the stuff to farmers, and the kind of seaweed that has shown results in cows isn’t commercially farmed.
Enter Australis Aquaculture of Greenfield, Massachusetts, which is in the midst of research at facilities in Vietnam and Portugal that is part of its push to become the first farm to produce the seaweed at commercial scale. The company calls the effort “Greener Grazing” and it expects to be operating at commercial scale in two years, said Josh Goldman, the company’s chief executive officer.
“If you could feed all the cows this seaweed, it would be the equivalent of taking all these cars off the road,” Goldman said. “Greener Grazing’s mission is to cultivate this, and accelerate scaling of this kind of seaweed.” The type of algae in question is a red seaweed called Asparagopsis, and it grows wild in many parts of the world.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found earlier this year that methane emissions were reduced by 24 to 58 percent in a dozen cows that ate one variety of the seaweed, depending on dose. The seaweed constituted only a small percentage of the cows’ food, but researchers found that the dent it could make in emissions would be significant if it were available to farmers. The methane from cow’s burps makes up 25 percent of methane emissions in the U.S., according to the university. The seaweed interrupts the bacterial process of producing methane in their guts, Goldman said.
Challenges remain, said Ermias Kebreab, a professor of animal science at UC Davis. The seaweed needs more tests to determine if it would impact meat and milk quality from the animals. The challenge of producing enough of the seaweed is staggering, leading Goldman to call it an “aquatic moonshot.” He estimated that the amount of seaweed needed to reach every cattle operation would be greater than the amount presently farmed in the world. “We need to have a consistent product. We need to find a way to grow it in a more consistent way,” Kebreab said.
That’s exactly what Australis Aquaculture is working on. The company has collected different strains of Asparagopsis seaweed to establish a seed bank of seaweeds that can grow in different climates, Goldman said. The next step will be to reproduce the seaweed on the company’s farms, Goldman said. Creating the seed bank will make it possible for farmers to grow the seaweed elsewhere, he said.
The effort has attracted the attention of the World Bank, said its senior aquaculture specialist Randall Brummett. He said scaling up farming of the seaweed in the developing world could make livestock operations more climate friendly and boost the economies of poorer nations.
Skeptics remain. The seaweed has yet to be proven palatable to cows, and the milk that they would yield hasn’t proven to be safe for human consumption, said Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality extension specialist in the animal science department at UC Davis. “When you look at it a little deeper, some serious concerns have to be addressed before it can be considered a serious mitigation tool,” he said.
There’s also the question of whether it will find acceptance with farmers. Jenni Tilton-Flood, a dairy farmer at Flood Brothers Farm in Clinton, Maine, said she’d be willing to try it, but cost and availability are also important. “As long as the nutrition would be valuable to our animals. We don’t just throw food at our cows. We have nutritionists for our cows,” she said. “If it can be a food source for livestock, that’s great.”
(Radio Iowa) — Western Iowans are divided about the merits of industrial wind projects being planned in the region. Chicago-based Invenergy wants to build almost 170 wind turbines in Sac and Ida counties in the next year, enough to power 90-thousand homes. Mason Fleenor, an Ida County farmer, says he’s worried about the noise and the view of large turbines on the horizon. “If you know anything about cattle, when it’s real windy, cattle don’t work real good in the wind. They can’t hear what’s going on around them,” Fleenor says. “I’m the same way, I don’t like to listen to these things every day.”
Invenergy developed another wind farm in the county that’s been operating for about two years. The county estimates it gains more than two-million dollars each year from industrial wind energy after taxes. Ida County Board of Supervisors Chairman Rhett Leonard says revenue from the turbine property values benefits road infrastructure projects. “The good thing about this is, we were to the point where our roads and infrastructures were deteriorating so quickly and it’s such a high priced item to replace and maintain,” Leonard says, ” we were getting to the point where we weren’t sure what we were going to do with these.”
After the first phase of Invenergy’s initial project in the area was complete, about 500 residents petitioned the county to have wind turbines be at least one mile away from a house. The county established a code saying they have to be at least 15-hundred feet away. In a statement, Invenergy said it builds projects where landowners have voluntarily signed easements or leases.
In Adair County, an amended ordinance setting a 2,000-foot setback from non-participating residences and an 800-foot setback for participating property owners associated with two Mid-American Energy wind farms, has a third its third and final reading set to take place at the next meeting of the Adair County Board of Supervisors. When complete, a total of nearly 500 turbines will be spread throughout the County. Construction began last summer, but the erection of turbines has been met with public push-back over noise, visual pollution and bird safety concerns.
(Thanks to Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)
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