During the month of August each year, Oklahoma Farm Bureau's leadership and staff travels to each of the organization's nine districts, meeting with members across the state, to begin developing policy for the following year from the ground up.

I met up with Tom Buchanan, OFB president, at yesterday's meeting in Okarche. He told me about a few of the issues that have been brought up in policy discussions so far.

Those issues topping the list of priorities include continuing to defend property rights, maintaining the integrity of ad valorem taxes and working with Oklahoma's Congressional delegation on contributing their views to the upcoming 2018 Farm Bill.


"What I've heard so far - certainly some of it to be expected," he said, listing the aforementioned topics. "Those issues are certainly there. What we want to be is the organization that educates and illustrates how certain policy decisions will impact Oklahoma agriculture and rural Oklahoma. But at the same time, be at the table to offer potential solutions that our membership will support."

Heading up these efforts, at least for now due to some recent staff changes, will be long-time OFB employee, Thad Doye, who has been chosen to serve as interim executive director until a permanent candidate can be found to fill the position.

You can listen to my conversation with Buchanan from yesterday, talking more about OFB's grassroots policy efforts and Thad Doye in his new role, by clicking or tapping here.

It's been 90 days since US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer informed Congress the Trump Administration intended to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and those meetings are set to begin today. The
USTR's office will set down today with their counterparts from Canada and Mexico to hopefully improve the treaty with much needed modernization in several areas of the agreement.

For pork producers, though, the only thing they hope to come out of these meetings - is for everything to stay the same more or less. Specifically, they simply hope that no harm is done to the inroads made by US agriculture under NAFTA, since its establishment in 1994.

Leading up to these meetings, the entire agriculture industry has been very vocal, especially pork producers, with one unified message - "Do no harm."

With meetings kicking off today, the National Pork Producers Council made one final nudge yesterday, to reiterate their stance on the subject to the USTR's office. The NPPC released a statement Tuesday underscoring NAFTA's importance to the pork industry and all of agriculture.

"Canada and Mexico are top markets for our pork, so, obviously, we don't want any disruptions in our exports to those countries; we need to keep pork trade flowing," said NPPC President Ken Maschhoff, a pork producer from Carlyle, Ill. "We want to reiterate to the Trump administration that NAFTA has been a boon to the U.S. pork industry and to all of American agriculture."

According to the release, U.S. trade north and south of the borders has more than tripled, since NAFTA was established, growing more rapidly than U.S. trade with the rest of the world.


For the U.S. pork industry, Canada is the No. 4 market, and Mexico is No. 2. Last year, the industry shipped almost $799 million of pork to Canada and nearly $1.4 billion to Mexico. Those exports help support more than 16,000 U.S. jobs.


"U.S. pork trade with Canada and Mexico has been very robust, and we need to maintain and even improve that trade," Maschhoff said. "We will continue to work with the administration to make sure that happens in a modernized NAFTA."

Click here to read the complete statement from the NPPC up on our website.

Geopolitical concerns regarding the rising tensions between the United States and North Korea have been taking their toll on the global beef market lately, says Dr. Glynn Tonsor, Kansas State University agricultural economist. He told me that this was especially obvious at the end of last week, when outside market influences and fundamentals combined added stress to not only the board, but the actual movement of product as well.


"There's something called a 'Fear Index' which is actually monitoring what people pay for options - the right to protect themselves from big moves in that spike," Tonsor said. "That occurs when global concerns about geopolitical issues escalate. And, we definitely had that this past week."


Beginning this week, though, it seems financial markets in both Asia and the US have regained some of their confidence, and a resulting rally ensued. But a situation like that, is not always the case, Tonsor says. And, there is still another wildcard out there lurking that could drag markets down again - that being China's reaction to how the US handles the increasing threats from North Korea. Tonsor says North Korea may not be a major player in our export portfolio, but the indirect impact it could have, could be costly for the US if it were able to disrupt trade with customers in the Pacific Rim through diplomatic pressure.


"Time will tell what the formal relationship with them is and probably most importantly, what China's role in that is," Tonsor said, also alluding to the domestic issue of sheer product volume being placed in the pipeline. "There's definitely growing concern about how lots of animals were placed in the last Cattle on Feed report. We will watch what this upcoming August one will look like. But exactly how we're able to move those cattle, I think is continuing to weigh on these markets.


Listen to Tonsor and I discuss how outside influences are affecting the global beef trade, as the industry anticipates higher placements of cattle on feed, on yesterday's Beef Buzz - click here.

 
A new report issued on Monday shows the dicamba damage footprint is still growing. Both the number of investigations and damaged acres are climbing, especially in the Midwest. Kevin Bradley, a plant science professor at the University of Missouri, compiled the data and it shows complaints of off-site dicamba movement now cover 21 states, stretching from North Dakota to Georgia.

Through state departments of agriculture surveys, at least 2,242 official investigations have taken place up through August 10th. Estimates from state weed extension experts show suspected dicamba damage totals 3.1 million acres, an area about the size of Connecticut. The number of investigations across the country has grown exponentially as well.

The report issued just three weeks earlier showed 1,411 investigations across roughly 2.5 million acres. Bradley says the ultimate effect any dicamba damage will have on yields and farmer profits will be difficult to guess until harvest time. "In reality, we will likely not know the extent of dicamba damage until the end of the season," Bradley says.

Click or tap here to jump over to Dr. Bradley's latest update on the damage reported from 21 states.

According to Glenn Selk in his latest article for the Cow/Calf Corner weekly newsletter, producers should consider the economic advantage of culling replacement heifers if they remain open after their first breeding season.

"After two months of gestation, experienced palpaters should have no difficulty identifying which heifers are pregnant and which heifers are not pregnant (open)," Selk writes. "Those heifers that are determined to be "open" after this breeding season, should be strong candidates for culling. Culling these heifers immediately after pregnancy checking serves three very economically valuable purposes."

The first of these purposes, is rather obvious. Culling these heifers, removes sub-fertile females from the herd and helps to keep such genetics from spreading.

Culling open heifers early will also reduce summer forage and winter costs, writes Selk.

Finally, identifying open heifers early will allow you to market the heifers while they are still young enough to be fed for the choice beef market.

"'B' maturity carcasses (those estimated to be 30 months of age or older) are very unlikely to be graded Choice and cannot be graded Select. In addition, they may not be eligible for some international beef markets. As a result, the heifers that are close to two years of age will suffer a price discount. If we wait until next spring to identify which two year-olds did not get bred, then we will be culling a female that will be marketed at a noticeable discount compared to the price/pound that she would have brought this summer as a much younger animal."

Click here to read more about the economic advantages of culling your replacement heifers early on in their first breeding season.

Coming up at the end of the month, it's the 2017 Northwest Oklahoma Beef Cattle Conference being held at the Chisholm Trail Expo Center on the Garfield County Fairgrounds.

Join fellow cattlemen in the region to learn how to conquer some of the basic fundamentals of the cattle industry such as breeding efficiency, suitable stocking rates, and nutrition - small things that make operations great and hold a beef operation steadfast.

This year's conference promises to showcase a great set of speakers that will help critically evaluate the commercial beef operation and work toward "Improving Efficiency for a Progressive Future".

Speakers this year include ranch consultant, Burke Teichert, Owner of Teichert Management and Consulting; Dr. Jaymelynn Farney, Extension Beef Systems Specialist from Kansas State University who will discuss her latest research on cover crops; and Gant Mourer, OSU's Beef Value Enhancement Specialist will talk about the Oklahoma Beef Value Network.

For more information about this year's conference, including program details and registration instructions, click over to our website.