While in Washington, D.C., Farm Director KC Sheperd sat down, caught up with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, and talked about his fight for rural Oklahoma in Washington, D.C.

Mullin has been busy traveling across Oklahoma, listening to different issues, and visiting with Oklahomans from all parts of the state.

“I think it would be easier to say where I didn’t travel,” Mullin said.

Mullin noted having the chance to listen to the unique needs of different parts of the state.

“We are having major drought issues, obviously in western Oklahoma,” Mullin said. “Eastern side- we did have major drought issues, and now we are pretty wet.”

The military bases are a special component to Oklahoma, Mullin said, and the ag communities embrace those bases.

Many producers have different concerns when it comes to work being completed in the ag space, Mullin said, from crop insurance in the farm bill to foreign land ownership impacting agriculture in the state.



The vision of the Oklahoma Beef Council is to be a positive difference for Oklahoma's farming and ranching families and the greater beef community, and its mission is to enhance beef demand by strengthening consumer trust and exceeding consumer expectations. 

To learn more, visit www.oklabeef.org. Also, don't forget to like its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/oklabeef for stories on Oklahoma's ranching families and great beef recipes. 

And Check out this video below that helps you learn more about the Beef Checkoff- .

In this episode of Beef Buzz, I am featuring comments from the Executive Director of Government Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Allison Rivera. While in Washington, D.C., Farm Director KC Sheperd had the chance to visit with Rivera about the vaccine bank and more.

“In the last farm bill, we created this three-legged stool, if you will, and one of the legs of the stool in the animal health space was the creation of the vaccine bank,” Rivera said. “I lovingly call it the FMD (Food and Mouth Disease) vaccine bank because that is what is currently in it. We did create this bank so that down the road, if for our pork friends, there is an ASF (African Swine Fever) vaccine and they want it in there, then we can find some dollars and pop it in there.”

Rivera said funding requested for this next vaccine bank will be based on a study from Dr. James Roth out of Iowa State University.

“He basically breaks down the number of strains of FMD out there and basically mentions what we might need and what would be beneficial to protect our industry from the outbreak of foreign animal disease like FMD,” Rivera said. “This go around, we are, again, asking for more of those dollars so that we can make sure we have enough antigen, and our bank is robust.”

As outbreaks of FMD have occurred off the coast of Australia and Indonesia, Rivera said, FMD is around the globe, so it is important to be prepared in the U.S.

Introducing Mallory Sager of the Pauls Valley FFA Chapter, Your 2023 Central Area Star in Agricultural Production

During the month of April, the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and Oklahoma Farm Report are spotlighting the 17 Area Stars of Oklahoma FFA that are among the highest achievers in the organization.

The stars come from the five areas in four categories- Star in Ag Placement, Star in Agriscience, Star in Agribusiness, and Star in Agricultural Production.

One Star Finalist featured in the coming days from each of the categories will be named the State Star Award Winner during the 97th Oklahoma State FFA Convention coming up on May 2nd and 3rd in Tulsa, Okla.

This week, our coverage of the 2023 Oklahoma FFA Star Award Finalists continues with Agricultural Production competitor Mallory Sager of the Pauls Valley FFA chapter representing the Central Area.

“My SAE is goat production, and I started when I was nine years old with three nannies and worked my way up to 16 now,” Sager said. “I did have 28 one year, and then I had to downgrade because that was a lot. I have 16 nannies, a buck right now, and a bunch of little babies running around on the ground.”

Once Sager goes to college, she said her dad will help take care of the goats, as she plans to come home on the weekends to do her part.

In the summer of 2021, the first diverse warm-season cover crop Kevin Pierce drilled into what had been a conventionally cropped monoculture of cereal rye on Noble Research Institute’s Red River Ranch was a big success.

“That first year, it was great. It was huge,” he says of the 15-some-seed mix, half grasses and half broadleaves. “When all the seeds came up and they grew, we thought, ‘Well, this is easy.’ It looked great.”

They grew gourds, cowpeas, buckwheat, radishes and more along with a mix of grasses.

He followed that in the fall with a cool-season cover-crop mix that produced a decent stand of wheat, oats, rye, barley with vetch, clover, turnips and other crops mixed in.

Then came the drought. Whether it was lack of water or the possibility that whatever fertility was left from the last conventional year’s application was now depleted from the sandy soils — or both — very little of the next warm-season cover crop they seeded came up or grew.

“What little bit of stand we did get, the fields were really ugly,” Pierce says. “They were covered in marestail, and that wasn’t something you were really proud of, to be honest. You couldn’t even find a radish out there.”

It also was still dry the whole time they were trying to seed the cool-season mix in the fall, he says, and again, not much of what they seeded grew.

Tuesday provided badly needed rainfall in locations that so many have needed for weeks and months.

Since Sunday- Lahoma in north central Oklahoma has received 2.43 inches of rain- and they- along with the Marena station in Payne County- due south of Lake Carl Blackwell- are the only stations in the state that have exceeded 2 inches in this week of rains to this point.

There's a huge blob across northwest Oklahoma extending over to the Arkansas line around I-40 with well over an inch of rainfall- and even Boise City has gotten in on the fun with 1.44 inches.

The area that is lacking to this point is southwest Oklahoma- and that may be changing this morning as a large rain storm is moving into Oklahoma from the plains of Texas- the map above is a snapshot of rain amounts at 5:40 this morning- at 5 AM- we looked at this map and the southwest corner of Oklahoma where the Hollis station is at had NO rain over the last three days- in that 40 minute time frame- they are up over a quarter of an inch and more is coming. Hopefully these other Mesonet sites that have just a few hundreths will get measurable rain as Wednesday moves on.

The graphic below shows what may be happening today rainfall wise- helping make this easily the best week of rain that we have had in upwards of a year in much of western Oklahoma.

Q & A – Blueprint For The Future Conference

Mark Johnson, Oklahoma State University Extension Beef Cattle Breeding Specialist, offers herd health advice as part of the weekly series known as the “Cow Calf Corner” published electronically by Dr. Peel, Mark Johnson, and Paul Beck. Today, Johnson is talking about the upcoming Blueprint for the Future Conference.

The 2023 Cattlemen’s Conference – Blueprint For The Future will be held in Stillwater on May 24th and 25th. The program will address a variety of topics that are challenging the beef industry and promises to be informative, exciting and timely. If you are in the cattle business, regardless of what sector of the industry or the size of your operation this conference will offer information of value. Based on feedback about this event, this article will address the most frequently asked questions. 

Q: Who had the idea for the Blueprint For The Future conference and why are we doing it now?

A: Discussions among cattle owners about the need for an event like this started during the first Cattlemen’s Congress Show in 2021. Based on OSU’s history of hosting some watershed events such as the National Steer Symposium in 1982 and the Blueprint for the Right Kind cattle conference in 1988, it was determined that the OSU Department of Animal and Food Sciences would host the event on the OSU campus. In 2022, personnel from the Cattlemen’s Congress stock show, the Noble Research Institute and OSU Cooperative Extension decided to cooperatively sponsor the event and began planning the topics and speakers.

Dr. Rob Johansson Explains America’s No-Cost Sugar Policy

While in Washington, D.C., Associate Farm Editor Reagan Calk had the chance to visit with the Director of Economics and Policy Analysis at the American Sugar Alliance, Dr. Rob Johansson.

Previous to working with the American Sugar Alliance, Johansson also served as the Chief Economist at the USDA for many years. Now, Johansson says he enjoys working with sugarcane and sugar beet growers around the country.

“The interesting thing about sugarcane and sugar beet is the USDA provides sugar producers with loans that are repaid with interest,” Johansson said. “So, we don’t have access to the ARC or PLC programs. We term the sugar program as a ‘no-cost policy’ because those loans are repaid with interest, so ultimately, they don’t cost the taxpayer any money in the farm bill.”

The sugar produced is stored and sold to customers as needed throughout the marketing year, Johansson said, so the funding through the sugar program helps producers to pay their bills while sugar is being sold to their customers throughout the year.

“As that sugar is sold, we take that money and repay the loan,” Johansson said. “It is useful for keeping that cash flow working for the entire crop year, and making sure there is no interruptions in sugar production or processing.”

Sugar policy does not allow for unlimited amounts of duty-free foreign sugar to enter the U.S. market. This helps provide American sugar producers with a more level playing field, given the heavy subsidization of sugar production around the world.