As farmers in the midwest plant corn and get ready to plant soybeans, the top Extension grain market economist for corn and soybeans, Dr. Darrel Good of the University of Illinois, is expecting a shift of up to a million corn acres away from the USDA Prospective Plantings Number of March 31st- with those acres adding to the eventual number of soybean acres planted in the US.

A lot of the reason has to do with price. Settlement prices on March 30th, the day before the release of the Prospective Plantings report, were $3.84 per bushel for the December 2016 corn futures contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and $9.23 per bushel for the November 2016 soybeans contract. On April 18th, the December corn contract settled at $3.90 per bushel, $.06 higher than on March 30th. The November 2016 soybeans contract settled at $9.67 per bushel on April 18th. Between March 30th and April 18th, soybean prices rose $.44 per bushel compared to $.06 per bushel for corn.

As of this morning, April 21st, November Soybeans are standing at $10.15, another 48 cents up since the start of this week. Corn prices have also risen this week, with the December Corn futures contract currently at $4.05- up twenty five cents per bushel compared to the start of the week.

Dr. Good expects at least some acres to shift to soybeans, but perhaps the bigger story of his early expectations this season has to do with greater weather risk for the crop- he sees a fading El Nino helping cut eventual yields for corn and soybeans this season, supporting stronger feed grain and oilseed prices.

Click here to read more- and to hear Dr. Good's comments, courtesy of farm broadcast colleague Todd Gleason, who works for the University of Illinois owned radio station, WILL.

The Center for Food Integrity's (CFI) Animal Care Review Panel has examined video footage released this week from West Virginia broiler farms. The National Chicken Council requested that CFI convene the panel, with Pilgrim's Pride supporting the independent third-party review of the video. It is contained in a report produced by the group Compassion in World Farming (CWF), which was featured in a Nicholas Kristof column that ran last weekend in The New York Times.


CFI created the Animal Care Review Panel program to engage recognized animal care specialists to examine video and provide expert perspectives for food retailers, the poultry industry and the media.


The expert panel in this case was comprised of Dr. Patricia Hester, Purdue University; Dr. Sacit Bilgili, Auburn University; and Dr. Bruce Webster, University of Georgia. The three experts viewed the video and provided feedback independently and were given the opportunity to review each other's assessments before the report was finalized.

 

 

Federal cooperative extension programs were developed to help researchers in the agriculture industry and, in turn, individual farmers in the United States.

According to a new study, an estimated 137,000 farmers would have left the fields in the past 25 years if it weren't for these programs.

In his paper, "State Cooperative Extension Spending and Farmer Exits," Stephan Goetz of Penn State University examines the value of extension services in an era in which fewer farmers are needed to produce food in the U.S. than in previous generations.

Nearly 500,000 more farmers left than entered agriculture over the period studied(1985 to present), the researchers found. "We estimate that without extension, as many as 137,700 (or 28%) additional farmers would have disappeared on net. Overall, extension programs are a remarkably cost-effective way of keeping farmers in agriculture," they said.

Click here to read more from this study on the value of Extension Programs for farmers and ranchers.