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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) — Six cattle were missing at daybreak today (Tuesday) in eastern Iowa after a semi tipped over on an Interstate 80 exit ramp. The semi was carrying 57 head of cattle. According to the Iowa State Patrol, the semi was exiting Interstate 80 for northbound Interstate-380 and tipped over shortly before midnight. All the cattle got out of the semi trailer. The exit was closed for a while overnight to deal with the wreck. Officials say the six missing cattle are probably in the Tiffin area.
MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Mason City’s mayor says a Minnesota tomato grower is proposing to build a hydroponic facility in a Mason City industrial park. Mayor Bill Schickel announced Monday that Owatonna, Minnesota-based Bushel Boy is planning a $35 million project that would occupy about 80 acres and could bring 50 new jobs to Mason City.
The city would have to pay about $223,000 for its 20 percent share of the cost to build a two-lane road for the facility. The state would pay the rest of the cost if a development grant is approved. The city also would have to extend water and sewer lines to the site.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Thanks to wet weather, it has been decades since Iowa farmers were so far behind in planting their expected corn and soybean crops.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Monday that 80% of the expected corn crop had been planted in Iowa in the week ending Sunday. That’s three-weeks behind the five-year average and the smallest percentage planted since 1982, when 76% of the crop had been planted.
The 41% of the soybean crop that has been planted was the smallest percentage since 1993. The soybean crop is 13 days behind the five-year average.
Last week, Iowa farmers had an average of 1.3 days suitable for fieldwork. The number was even smaller in the lower third of the state.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Trump administration is following through on a plan to allow year-round sales of gasoline mixed with 15% ethanol. The Environmental Protection Agency announced the change Friday, ending a summertime ban imposed out of concerns for increased smog from the higher ethanol blend. The agency had proposed the change in March. The change also fulfills a pledge that President Donald Trump made to U.S. corn farmers, who see ethanol as an important driver of demand for their crops. Oil refineries have been seeking exemptions from government requirements to include ethanol in their fuel mixes.
Environmental groups contend the U.S. Clean Air Act prohibits year-round sales of E15, and court challenges are expected. Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said today (Friday), the agency is prepared to win a court fight. Wehrum said in a conference call with reporters, that if the agency believed the change ran afoul of the Clean Air Act, “we wouldn’t have done it.”
Federal law for more than a decade has mandated that oil refineries mix ethanol into their fuel. The Trump administration’s former EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, had angered lawmakers, growers and ethanol processors in Iowa and other key election states by granting a spate of exemptions sparing refineries from that mandate. The dispute sparked a billboard campaign and at least one tractor rally by angry farmers in the Midwest last year, threatening to erode what has been a base of support for Trump.
According to Weddum, the change removes a barrier to wider sales of E15 and is expected to expand the market for ethanol — although immediate effects on the market are expected to be minimal. Only about 1,000 to 1,500 of more than 150,000 U.S. gas stations currently sell the higher-ethanol blend. “It’ll take some time” to see an overall jump in E15 sales, he said. Today’s (Friday’s) announcement was widely lauded by Midwest lawmakers, farm groups and the biofuel industry.
The EPA move also implements a regulatory change in the ethanol program intended to curb what the oil industry believes in price manipulation in the ethanol program. Wehrum said the regulatory change makes more transparent how ethanol tax credits are applied by ethanol blenders.
(Radio Iowa) — An environmental group has bought an 830-acre property in western Iowa’s Loess (Luss) Hills for two-and-a-half million dollars with plans preserve its native prairie. The Nature Conservancy in Iowa has been talking with a landowner for decades about acquiring his property in Plymouth County to preserve the landscape. The Conservancy’s Graham McGaffin says they were aware of some competing interests to convert the property to smaller parcels or use some of the Loess Hills dirt for construction needs.
“The high quality prairie that’s here, we knew that would be a true loss if either of those outcomes occurred,” McGaffin says. The land links two other protected properties for a combined almost three-thousand acres in the northern Loess Hills.”It buffers two protected properties by the Iowa D-N-R so it’s kind of a puzzle piece in there,” McGaffin says.
He says the land will be great for migrating birds and other wildlife. “You know, it’s amazing to find a piece of ground not only that’s this large but has this amount of high quality native loess hills prairie,” according to McGaffin. They’ll eventually transfer the property — named the Hummel tract — to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to manage. The public will be able to hunt and hike there.
(Thanks Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Between the country’s trade dispute with China and the seemingly endless storms that have drenched the central U.S., Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt has had plenty of time to think about whether it’s too late to plant this season, how much federal aid he might get if he does or whether to skip it altogether and opt for an insurance payment. Instead of driving his tractor, he’s driving a truck these days to earn a living while wondering how long it will be before he can return to his fields. “Sometimes I think, what the heck am I doing farming?” he said recently by phone while returning home after hauling a shipment of dry ice to Chicago. “When you owe the bank money, you do some pretty crazy stuff.”
Ewoldt is one of thousands of Midwestern farmers facing such decisions as they endure a spring like no other. It started with poor corn and soybean prices falling even further as the U.S. and China imposed new tariffs, and was compounded by torrential rain and flooding that has made planting impossible and killed off crops that were just starting to emerge. Conscious that the trade dispute was devastating American farmers, President Donald Trump promised $16 billion in aid — an increase over last year’s $11 billion in aid — but the promise has only added to farmers’ confusion about how to approach this strange spring. That’s because details about how much money farmers would receive won’t be released until later, to avoid influencing what crops they decide to plant. While there’s a rationale behind keeping the aid details secret, it adds another layer of uncertainty for farmers already guessing about the weather, future crop prices and how much they would get in insurance payments if they don’t plant a crop.
“It’s a take what you can get and keep moving year,” said Todd Hubbs, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. “Depending on how the payments and everything break out, each farm is different.” In the 18 states that grow most of the nation’s corn, only 58% of the crop had been planted as of last week — a far cry from the 90% that would ordinarily be planted by that point. In states that grow nearly all of the soybeans, less than half of the normal crop had been planted. Farmers have even taken to Twitter — creating a #noplant19 hashtag — to commiserate and share photos of their swamped fields.
For Jeff Jorgenson, it’s an all-consuming question of how much of his roughly 3,000 acres of southwestern Iowa land he can profitably farm. About a quarter of it can’t be farmed due to Missouri River flooding, and much of his remaining property has been inundated with rain and water from the neighboring Nishnabotna River. Navigating muddy roads in his pickup truck this week, he tried to figure out whether it would be worth pumping water off his land or whether that would even be possible. Normally it wouldn’t be worth the effort, but with the prospect that the Midwest’s miserable weather will reduce the nation’s fall harvest, corn and soybean prices have started to rise and planting every acre possible has become more attractive than settling for insurance that would pay roughly half the revenue of a normal crop.
Jorgenson, 44, said it’s a puzzle trying to figure out how much land should remain unplanted and eligible for insurance payments, how much should be planted, how much money in federal aid will be available and whether those funding sources will be enough to cover his operating loan. “Honestly, 24 hours a day, this is all you can think about,” he said. Since Bob Worth started farming in 1970, this is the first year he’s opted not to plant on most of his 2,300 acres near the southwestern Minnesota community of Lake Benton. It was a difficult choice, but one Worth said he felt obligated to make given the ducks that are swimming where his corn and soybeans should be growing. “I’m not going to try to destroy my ground to get a crop in,” he said, noting that planting equipment would rut and compact his land.
Despite insurance payments he will receive, Worth, 66, said he’ll need to refinance loans and lose some of the equity has built up on land that has been in his family for generations.
The deadline for not planting and taking an insurance payment without a penalty varies depending on the state and crop, but the decision time has either passed or is approaching. Hubbs, the Illinois economist, said choosing to opt out, especially when prices are rising, is agonizing for farmers but may be the right choice because of the risk of a poor harvest when planting late in soggy ground and the possibility that the farmer won’t be able to harvest the crop before the weather turns cold.
Hubbs said planting late won’t work out for many farmers unless summer and fall weather conditions are nearly perfect — a scenario that he said seems hard to imagine, given that “storms just keep firing up and moving through.” Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, said he worries that the federal aid Trump announced will encourage some farmers who would normally forgo a crop to instead risk planning on wet land. That’s a tough decision for individuals, but collectively it could reduce the supply of corn and soybeans and lead to higher prices. “We’ve been stuck in a pattern of overproduction, and this could change that,” Hart said.
Ewoldt, who farms on about 1,100 acres he rents from relatives near the Mississippi River outside Davenport, said he hopes he can figure out what’s best for his farm and his family. Ewoldt, 47, said he’s good at producing a crop but that figuring out what to do in the coming weeks seems like guesswork. “You’re trying to do the algebra equations and figure things out, but you have too many unknowns right now,” he said. “Nobody has a clue what we’re doing.”
(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported multiple discharges from sewage treatment plants and livestock facilities in recent days as systems got overwhelmed by large amounts of rain. The D-N-R’s Scott Wilson says livestock facilities have struggled to handle the manure all spring. “Because of the wet weather, just bad farm conditions, ground conditions, and so right now with the extra rains they are full. Some have been overflowing,” Wilson says. “For some that’s a permit-allowable thing — for others it’s not.” He says the D-N-R tries to help producers address the issue before it becomes a problem. “Yeah, we do like to talk to facilities about options for transferring manure, holding manure, putting it out on fields that are potentially full — but it buys us some time to let manure flow across fields,” Wilson says.
Wilson says there is not set rule or plan that can be used for every situation. “It really is very specific to each facility,” he says, “which is one of the reasons why we always like to asked people to call us when they are anticipating a problem, or they discover that they’ve already got a problem.” The D-N-R had more than 70 reports of city sewage treatment plants discharging after having trouble handling the large volumes of water. “Sometimes those discharges that are being reported are coming from the wastewater treatment plants themselves. Where the treatment plant is getting influent that exceeds what they can handle,” according to Wilson. “It also is sometimes in what we call the collection system.” Problems in the collection system include pipes that get plugged or overwhelmed with water. He says some systems still have sump pumps connected to them from houses and that additional water can overwhelm a plant.
Wilson says they issue a warning to let the public know there might be sewage in the waterways. “It’s the kind of thing for at least for the days which it is occurring anda few after — you’d want to be wary. There is potential for pathogens to be in the water. And also because of a flooding situation there’s other safety hazards in the water too, floating debris, force of the water moving,” Wilson says. He says the risk is a different for the animal manure that’s released from storage. But, he says there have been no reports of dead fish or other aquatic life. Wilson says the immense volume of water helps dilute the risk. “When you have flooding situations, you do end up with a lot of dilution. That’s not an excuse to allow pollution — but it does frankly help out in this situation,” he explains. “Where you don’t see the impact that you might see otherwise if the wastewater was going directly into a stream that was at low flow or normal flow.”
Wilson says livestock facilities that are discharging or expecting to discharge should contact their local D-N-R field office After hours, facilities can call the D-N-R emergency spill line at 515-725-8694. The D-N-R website has more information about spill reporting requirements.
Ag/Outdoor, Heartbeat Today, Podcasts
Jim Field visits with Park Manager Josh Peach about the Kids Fishing Event on Saturday at Lake Anita State Park.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (23.6MB)
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