An Iowan who’s an agricultural advisor for President-elect Trump’s transition team is urging Trump to “block” some “mega-mergers” in the ag industry. Bruce Rastetter, of Alden, says the pending mergers of “agrochemical and seed giants” like DuPont and Dow Chemical will mean higher prices for farmers. “There will be bundling of services, so if they combine chemical and seed and only those seed traits can take a certain chemical sold by that company, it’s naturally going to increase costs,” Rastetter says.

Rastetter also cites the proposed merger of St. Louis-based Monsanto and Bayer, which was founded in Germany more than 150 years ago. “So concern about competition, concern about then the lack of innovation, lack of multiple companies we have and the concern for choice for farmers,” Rastetter says.

If Trump’s Administration doesn’t step in, Rastetter says the four largest seed and ag chemical suppliers in the country will become just two mammoth companies — controlling between 60 and 70 percent of the U.S. corn and soybean seed market. “Those two both start selling chemicals and seed, when they primarily did one or the other before and so the market share becomes very large, in a variety of different crops,” Rastetter says.

With two rather than four major companies, Rastetter says there will be less research to boost crop yields. He says smaller companies developing new plant varieties and traits are struggling to bring new products to market. “The root cause of this is government regulation. It costs $150 million to create a new seed trait. Think of that. How many small businesses can do that? And then, not only the $150 million, but an uncertain timeline for when or if the government’s ever going to approve it,” Rastetter says. “So if we really want to get serious about this, yes, the mergers shouldn’t go through, but we should to fix the government problem and I believe Donald Trump will do that.”

Rastetter is an entrepreneur who has made millions by raising pork and producing ethanol. His “Summit Agricultural Group” has partnered with a Brazilian company to build Brazil’s first corn-only ethanol plant. Rastetter says those experiences give him a platform to raise the alarm about these two agribusiness mergers. “As a businessman and as a farmer on two continents, in Brazil and the U.S., I have a unique perspective on it,” Rastetter says. “And also I have been concerned that commodity groups have been tentative about saying something on this situation.”

Rastetter says Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley shares his concerns about these mergers. Rastetter predicts Grassley will bring up the merger issue next week when Trump’s nominee for attorney general appears before the senate committee Grassley leads.

(Radio Iowa)

w/Max Dirks.

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Iowa has received an additional 115,000 acres that can be enrolled in the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for critical wildlife and water quality efforts.
For landowners who have general CRP contracts expiring in 2017, this may be their only opportunity to re-enroll existing CRP back into the program. It is not clear whether there will be a general CRP signup in 2017.

The State Acres For wildlife Enhancement (SAFE) program is part of the continuous CRP program with the goal of restoring high-priority wildlife habitat tailored to specific need. SAFE practices can be used to restore habitat for threatened and endangered species, species that have suffered significant population declines or species that provide significant social or economic value to the community.

Iowa’s existing SAFE programs, Gaining Ground SAFE – targeted to grassland birds and pollinators, and Pheasant Recovery SAFE – targeted at restoring pheasant habitat, each received additional allocations of 50,000 and 25,000 acres respectively. In addition to soil erosion prevention and water quality improvements, both SAFE projects provide an excellent opportunity for landowners to enroll land into CRP to establish quality wildlife habitat.

The Iowa DNR has created a webpage for landowners to learn more about federal and state programs available to them. The webpage includes a list of DNR staff who are experts at connecting landowners with programs and writing land management plans that benefit the landowner, wildlife and improve water quality. There is also a link to FSA where landowners can find information about their local FSA office. The landowner assistance webpage is at www.iowadnr.gov/crp.

In addition to the existing Iowa SAFE project announcements, an all-new SAFE project, called Iowa Early Successional Quail Habitat, has been approved for 40,000 acres.

The Iowa Early Successional Quail Habitat SAFE project, in addition to soil erosion prevention and water quality improvements, is designed to restore early successional habitat across Iowa’s southern quail range where it will be the most beneficial for bobwhite quail. This new SAFE will also be tremendously beneficial to native pollinators and Monarch butterflies.

Landowners may begin submitting applications on Jan. 9 for Gaining Ground SAFE and Pheasant Recovery SAFE. Applications for the new Quail Habitat SAFE will be accepted later in January.

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Our region of the country is securing its popularity for renewable energy projects, according to a report from the Center for Rural Affairs. Lucas Nelsen, who authored the report “Link to Rural Development and a Renewable Future,” says 41-percent of the new energy generation projects that went online last year were specifically wind energy projects.

“It’s really important, primarily because of where that generation is being built,” Nelsen says. “That generation is most often built in the Midwest and Great Plains and especially near rural areas where there’s abundant resources and a lot of space to put those projects.” While the projects bring a host of benefits to rural communities, he says barriers remain to renewable energy.

“Those benefits can range from new tax revenue, new jobs in the community, new economic activity and some guaranteed income for landowners who host those projects,” Nelsen says. “There are some roadblocks to that development and one of those roadblocks has been new transmission infrastructure to connect those projects to the grid.” Nelsen says one key to solving those transmission problems lies in proper planning.

“The best thing people can do is make sure they’re helping to improve these projects, that they’re finding out what a project might mean for their area, that they’re looking at maps at community meetings with developers and pointing out areas of concern they want the developers to avoid,” Nelsen says, “and making sure that the process runs smoothly.” Nelsen says the report shows “wind turbine technician” is the fastest growing profession in the country and the Department of Energy estimates the wind industry could support up to 380-thousand jobs by 2030. The wind industry employs some seven-thousand Iowans.

(Radio Iowa)

DURANGO, Iowa (AP) – Authorities say one man was killed and another injured while repairing a tractor in Dubuque County. The accident occurred around 2 p.m. Monday at a farm in rural Durango. The Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office says the tractor slipped into gear during the repairs and ran over the two men.

One man was pronounced dead at the scene. The other man has been taken to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. Their names haven’t been released.

The priorities for Iowa Farmers Union members next year include improving water quality, addressing the problem of ag concentration and passing a workable farm bill. Incoming president Aaron Lehman, of Polk City, says farmers have much to offer in meeting those challenges. “On the federal level, we’re very worried about concentration in agribusiness with the recent wave of mergers going on,” Lehman says. “Of course, we’re going to have a new farm bill that will be very important to have some big improvements there to help our farm economy.”

Lehman says his group favors a voluntary approach when it comes to improving the state’s water quality. “We really need to make sure the proper incentives are there and we’re monitoring properly,” Lehman says. “So, what practices are going to give us the biggest bang for buck in Iowa and are we seeing those improvements in water quality? Those are going to be major questions for the state.”

Lehman says his group wants to see more diversification of agriculture in Iowa and will be working with state legislators on that after the first of the year.

(Radio Iowa)

An Iowa State University researcher studying the impact of wind turbines on Iowa crops hopes to win funding to expand on the initial work he has done. Gene Takle has already found some differences in conditions such as temperature and humidity in fields near turbines. That funding is running out in the next year. “We have written one proposal to the National Science Foundation for additional funding and we’re in the process right now of writing a proposal — if it were funded — would bring researchers from several institutions to focus on this problem,” Takle says.

Takle, a distinguished professor of agronomy and geological and atmospheric sciences, says there are many other researchers who are interested in taking part. “Scientists from Purdue, from the University of Illinois, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, from the University of Oklahoma, the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment — which is a U-S-D-A lab — is interested in coming and bringing instruments. And we also have interest from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the University of Helsinki that are interested and want to participate in the analysis of any data that we get in,” according to Takle.

Takle says his research is different from what has been done by others. “There have been researchers who have looked at two aspects. They have looked at conditions upwind and downwind of winds farms, but they haven’t measured conditions inside a wind farm,” Takle says. Other researchers have examined satellite images of wind farms. “They’ve looked at Iowa and they’ve looked the landscape over Texas, where there is a lot of wind farms,” Takle explains, “and they see a consistent pattern that at night the satellite pictures show that there is a very slight warm spot associated with each of these wind farms.”

He says that warm spot is similar to heat islands seen on satellites near cities. Takle says there is more to learn more about why the heat island is created. “These researchers have not been down on the ground to say ‘well it’s because it was an irrigation region around this area or cattle were grazed there, or crops were managed differently of for some other reason other than the turbines creating it,'” Takle says. “So we are the first to measure inside a wind farm and concurrently outside a wind farm so we can actually measure the differences.”

Takle says all these other variables will make it harder to find answers to the causes of the impact on farm fields near the turbines.

(Radio Iowa)

Out-going U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has some suggestions for farmers and others who will lobby congress about items in the NEXT Farm Bill. “We faced a very difficult challenge with the recent Farm Bill because the conversation started something like this: ‘We’ve got to save $23 billion,'” Vilsack says. “That was the first thing out of the box. The powers that be decided that saving money was the most important aspect of the Farm Bill.”

Vilsack says, as a result, corn and soybean farmers from the Midwest were “pitted against” southern farmers who raise cotton and produce sugar as the 2014 Farm Bill was written. Vilsack is urging groups in the farm sector to be more vocal advocates of federal crop insurance subsidies and other U-S-D-A programs that provide grants for rural development. Key members of congress say negotiations on the 2018 Farm Bill could begin later THIS month.

“So it’s going to be incredibly important for us to start the conversation with: ‘What is the need in rural America?’ because rural America is an important place. It’s where we get our food. It impacts our water. It’s our feed stock for our energy sources. It’s where we recreate. It’s our military families and, oh yeah, it gives everybody else in the country the ability to do something other than farming because we’re tremendously productive,” Vilsack says. “It’s an important place. It deserves to have a conversation, first and foremost, as to what the need is.”

Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, has been the nation’s top ag official for the past eight years. In 1889, Grover Cleveland was the first president to include an agriculture secretary in his cabinet. There have been 30 ag secretaries since then, five of whom came from Iowa. “Tama Jim” Wilson served three presidents, from 1898 to 1913. Edwin Meredith, founder of the Des Moines-based Meredith publishing company, served a year in President Wilson’s cabinet. Henry C. Wallace and his son, Henry A. Wallace, also did stints as the country’s agriculture secretary during the last century.

(Radio Iowa)

An agricultural economist says he doesn’t see anything in the near future to slow the growth in the hog industry. David Miller, director of research and commodity services for the Iowa Farm Bureau, says today’s hog producers continue to be more efficient. “We continue to get advances in genetics that are able to push this 1 to 1.5 percent gains that we’re seeing in both litters per sow and better return rates on breeding,” Miller says. “I think relative to pigs per litter – that’s on a march upward.” Purdue ag economist Chris Hurt says while the increase of pigs per litter has slowed slightly over the years – it is still on the positive side.

“The proof is in the pudding,” Miller says. “We’ve been at this a long time, certainly for 35 years or so, basically at this same rate. When you have that kind of longevity, you have to say it’s probably going to be on that positive side – at least that 1 to 1.25 percent a year.” The USDA reported a two percent increase in pigs per litter for September to November, one percent higher than pre-report estimates.

(Reporting by Meghan Grebner, Brownfield Ag News)