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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!
The Cass County Conservation Board is holding a Bird Feeder Workshop. The workshop will be held at Outdoor Educational Classroom in Massena, on Saturday November 10th, at 1PM. FREE, All ages welcome. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Learn all about feeding the birds also make and take a bird feeder!
Please pre-register by November 6th by calling 712-769-2372 or email lkanning@casscoia.us
Montgomery County will offer the Commercial Ag Weed, Insect and Plant Disease Management Continuing Instruction Course (CIC) for commercial pesticide applicators Wednesday, November 14, 2018. The program will be shown at locations across Iowa through the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP). The local attendance site is the Montgomery County Extension Office located at 400 Bridge Street Suite #2 in Red Oak. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m., and the course runs from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The registration fee is $35 on or before Nov. 7 and $45 after Nov. 7. To register or to obtain additional information about the CIC, contact Katie Hart at the ISU Extension and Outreach office in Montgomery County by phoning (712) 623-2592.
The course will provide continuing instruction credit for commercial pesticide applicators certified in categories 1A, 1B, 1C, and 10. Topics covered will include information on equipment calibration and safe application techniques, pesticide drift reduction, phytotoxicity, pesticide stewardship, and pest management. Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in Integrated Pest Management will be offered at this program. Interested participants should bring their CCA number. Additional information and registration forms for this and other courses offered by the PSEP program can be accessed at www.extension.iastate.edu/PSEP/ComAp.html
Iowa 3rd District Congressman David Young and IA Ag Secretary Mike Naig were in Atlantic, Friday afternoon for a tour of the new Elite Octane Ethanol Plant, as part of their “Harvest Tour” across southwest Iowa. They started at Landess Co-Op in Yale and proceeded to a cattle feedlot near Fontanelle, before their stop in Atlantic. Prior to his visit, Naig spoke with KJAN News. He said they’re “Working their way through the supply chain and checking on folks as they’re progressing through the Fall, and the harvest is well underway. Naig spoke of the challenges farmers have been facing.
Naig said also, there’s a lot of work that gets done after the crop is in the bin. Livestock producers have a lot of work ahead of them as well.
The prices crop producers get for their product and the market for those products have been a top concern for people Naig has spoken with, especially he says, with regard to the impact of trade embargoes and the stalled Farm Bill.
Naig said it’s certain no action will be taken on the Farm Bill until after the election on Nov. 6th, but there’s still hope.
As far as the election is concerned, Naig said he’s tried to get out and convey a positive vision to the voters, as opposed to his opponents’ negative campaign ads.
His Democrat opponent is Tim Gannon. Libertarian Party candidate Rick Stewart is also in the running to Iowa’s next Secretary of Agriculture, but Naig didn’t mention him in his time speaking with KJAN News.
Sheriff’s officials in Union County say a Creston man reported Thursday, that sometime after 10-p.m. Wednesday, someone unbolted the front weights off a John Deere 4055 tractor and took them while the tractor was parked in a field. The weights were valued at $1,400.
(Radio Iowa) — The D-N-R wildlife biologist who tracks pheasant numbers says the late harvest is likely to hurt the success of some hunters as the season gets underway Saturday. Todd Bogenschutz says standing crops give the birds places to hide. “If you’ve got a C-R-P field and it’s got standing crops around it, you know it’s still worth hunting. I think when the birds flush they are going to go into the crops and it’s going to be king of done. Where the crops are out they are going to stay maybe more where you can hunt them,” he says. “I think just for success the areas where the crops have been harvest are going to be a little bit better — but I think you can get birds in both areas.”
Boggenschutz says it really depends on where you are in the state. He says some areas have as much as 70 percent of the crops out, where others only have 10 percent. He says you might want to do a little scouting before the hunt. The D-N-R survey recorded the second highest population count ever — and that had Bogenschutz thinking hunters were going to do well. “Some places were up almost 100 percent and northwest Iowa we had a little more winter last year and some rain and the numbers were pretty much status quo — but I mean they were some of our best bird numbers in the state last year — so they’re still fairly decent even though they didn’t go up at all,” according to Boggenschutz.
Boggenschutz says it appears right now that those who put on the blaze orange and head out to hunt are going to see some good weather. Boggenschutz says they are worried on some openers, especially when it’s warm, as that can take a toll on dogs. But he doesn’t think that is going to be a big issue for this opening day. Boggenschutz has this prediction for the final tally. “I think we are going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 60-thousand hunters and the harvest is probably going to be about 250 to 300-thousand birds,” Boggenschutz says.
Poor weather brought bird numbers down and that also led to a decline in hunters. He says there is potential to have much bigger bird numbers. “I think the birds are out there to shoot four or 500-thousand roosters. Based on the roadside counts I think that potential is there,” Boggenschutz says. “But we’d need 80 to 90 to 100-thousand hunters to do it and I don’t think we’ll see that many hunters. I’d be happy if we break 60 (thousand) — I think we’ll see around 58 (thousand). I think the birds are there to have a way higher harvest — we’ve just got to get more hunters out.”
An estimated 55-thousand hunters harvested 22-thousand roosters last year. That was two-thousand fewer hunters than in 2016. Boggenschutz says hunters will hopefully have success this year and the word will get out and bring more people back. The pheasant season opens Saturday ( Oct. 27) and runs through January 10th. Shooting hours are 8 a-m. to 4:30 p-m. The daily bag limit is three rooster pheasants with a possession limit of 12. Hunters must have a valid hunting license and habitat fee.
(Radio Iowa Special feature) — This week, Radio Iowa’s Campaign Countdown has been providing snapshots of the statewide candidates Iowans will vote upon November 6th. An incumbent who’s been in the post for seven months faces two challengers in the race to be Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture for the next four years.
Iowa’s long-time State Ag Secretary Bill Northey resigned in March to take a job in the USDA. Governor Reynolds appointed Mike Naig to the post. Naig defeated four competitors at the GOP’s state convention in June to win the Republican nomination for ag secretary. “During this campaign I’ve laid out my vision for the future of agriculture and that is in attracting and inspiring the next generation of Iowans to consider careers in agriculture,” Naig told convention delegates. Naig is a native of the northwest Iowa community of Cylinder.
Tim Gannon, the Democratic Party’s nominee for state ag secretary, is a Mingo native who’s part of his family farming operation in Jasper County. “I’m running because I don’t want to see Iowa become a place where our big cities, our metro areas are doing really well, providing economy opportunity, but all our small towns and rural areas are struggling to keep up,” Gannon said at the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention in June. Gannon worked for Tom Vilsack in the governor’s office and in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Libertarian Party’s nominee for state ag secretary is Rick Stewart. “We’ve got 82,000 farmers who know who to farm,” Stewart said on The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. “What the secretary of agriculture needs to know is how to stop the government from telling the farmers how to do their job.” Stewart is a retired businessman from Cedar Rapids.
(Radio Iowa) — A top ethanol industry official is echoing Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley’s concern about the timeline the Environment Protection Agency has proposed for moving to year-round sales of E15. The recently published agenda by the EPA shows E15 rule making would begin in February. American Coalition for Ethanol CEO Brian Jennings says the process needs to start much sooner than that.
“A proposed rule in February, taking into consideration the comment period, probably a public hearing, how long it has taken EPA to conduct other rule making — it doesn’t appear as if they will be able to get this done in time for the 2019 summer driving season,” Jennings said. Grassley, in a call with reporters this week, said it will “look like the president wasn’t serious in his announcement” if the EPA doesn’t ramp up its timeline.
“We don’t need this sort of bureaucratic red tape with something that’s been discussed in Washington for four or five years and discussed within this administration, and specifically with EPA, and specifically face to face with the president for about a year now,” Grassley said. According to Jennings, it’s up to the Trump Administration to follow through.
“We really need the administration to speed this up,” Jennings said. “We can’t have EPA slow-walk this after the president made such a big splash in announcing it.” Current law restricts the sale of E15 and higher ethanol blends from June 1st to September 15th. President Trump traveled to Council Bluffs two weeks ago and announced he directed the EPA to make E15 available all year.
(Thanks to Amy Mayer, Iowa Public Radio, and Mark Dorenkamp, Brownfield Ag News)
JACKSON COUNTY, Iowa – Officials with the Iowa DNR report that at around 9-a.m. Saturday, Sabula Fire and Rescue were dispatched to Browns Lake near Green Island Wildlife Management Area in eastern Iowa’s Jackson County, for a hunter in the water holding onto a capsized kayak. An Iowa DNR Conservation Officer already on the water patrolling responded to the area immediately, as well as another DNR Conservation Officer utilizing a mud boat and a DNR Wildlife Technician in the area.
Authorities say DNR officers and first responders dealt with major challenges during the rescue operation due to the extremely windy conditions and high waves. The hunter, identified as Jared Porter of Madison, Wisconsin, was eventually located in a flooded timber area holding onto a tree. A DNR Conservation Officer, along with the Sabula Fire Department were able to rescue the hunter and his dog from the water and bring them to shore. Porter was transported to a local hospital and released; his dog didn’t require any medical attention.
When officers later talked with Porter, the man explained he was trying to locate a place to hunt but was unable to due to the higher than normal water levels and when he left for the hunt in the morning, there were no winds and the water was very calm. Porter said his kayak capsized while he was on his way back and got out onto the open waters and hit a large wave about 50 yards away. Porter was able to remain on his cell phone with dispatch the entire time because of his water proof cell phone case.
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