Harvest is rolling across the US for our major spring planted crops. The US Corn crop is now 34% harvested- up from 23% a week ago- Soybeans are now 43% harvested- up also from 23% last week- cotton stands at 25% harvested- up from 18% a week ago and grain sorghum is 44% harvested versus 35% last week.

As for our southern plains hard red winter wheat-

Oklahoma winter wheat planted reached 50 percent, up 13 points from the previous year but down 3 points from normal. Winter wheat emerged reached 23 percent, up 4 points from the previous year but down 4 points from normal.

Kansas winter wheat planted was 57 percent, ahead of 47 percent last year, and near 56 percent for the five-year average. Emerged was 28 percent, ahead of 17 percent last year, but near 29 percent average.

Texas winter wheat planted reached 55 percent, down 2 percentage points from the previous year and up 2 from the five-year average. Winter wheat emerged reached 28 percent, up 1 point from the previous year and up 2 points from the average.

For the U.S., winter wheat planted for the U.S. reached 57 percent, up 4 percentage points from the previous year and even with the five-year average.





Midwest Farm Shows is proud to produce the two best Farm Shows in the State of Oklahoma annually- the Tulsa Farm Show each December and the Oklahoma City Farm Show each April.

The Tulsa Farm Show is Oklahoma’s premier agricultural and ranching event- and returns to the SageNet Center (Expo Square) December, 7-8-9, 2023.

Now is the ideal time to contact the Midwest Farm Show Office at 507-437-7969 and book space at the 2023 Tulsa Farm Show.  To learn more about the Tulsa Farm Show, click here. 

 

OCA’s Michael Kelsey Sees Optimism and Opportunity in the Cattle Industry

In this episode of Beef Buzz, I am back talking with the Executive Vice President of the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, Michael Kelsey, about the state of the cattle industry.

Through what Kelsey has seen around the country, he said there is a lot of optimism regarding the beef industry, as well as some concern. Some of that concern, he added, is dependent on weather conditions and when heifer retention will begin.

“The cattle market is strong, and beef demand continues to be strong,” Kelsey said.

Many producers want to begin to retain some heifers, Kelsey said, but they do not have the ability to do so just yet.

“Before you have the ability to do it, you have to have the desire to do it,” Kelsey said. “I have to have the want to. There is a lot of want to out there, and to me, that is very encouraging.”

Kelsey said the majority of cattle producers in the state recognize that there is opportunity in the beef industry for several years to come for reasons beyond profitability.

Tough Year for Cotton in Oklahoma Due to Extreme Heat and Low Precipitation

At the Shantz Farm Field Day last week, Associate Farm Editor, Reagan Calk, had the chance to visit with the NexGen Regional Manager, Shane Osborne, about this year’s cotton crop.

According to the latest Oklahoma Crop Progress Report issued by the USDA on October 2, cotton conditions rated 9 percent good to excellent, 28 percent fair, and 63 percent poor to very poor. In the week prior, conditions rated 14 percent good to excellent, 25 percent fair, and 61 percent poor to very poor. 

“It has been a very rough year,” Osborne said. “We actually started out with decent potential, but to be quite honest, the heat this year has been overwhelming. We have had an abundance of heat from early on.”

Many areas, Osborne said, never received rainfall amounts substantial enough to develop or store water in the soil profile.

“That storage in the profile- we rely heavily on that to make cotton in Oklahoma both for dryland, of course, but also the irrigated acre depends heavily on that storage in the profile,” Osborne said. “Our best crops come from a combination of irrigation and storage. When we don’t have that, it is going to be a very tough year.”

There are several reasons to overseed pastures in the fall, and several ways to do it. Jim Johnson of Noble Research Institute shares his best tips for cover-crop success.



If you’re thinking about overseeding cover crops in your pastures this fall, that’s a good place to start – thinking about both the why and the how.

Jim Johnson, senior ag consultant at Noble Research Institute, says there are three main reasons ranchers and farmers might consider planting a cover crop on grazing land in the fall:

1. “It could be that they have too much bare ground,” he says. “They’ve got perennial pasture that’s maybe been weakened by drought or maybe by overgrazing or maybe a combination of both, and they want to get some cover on it.”
2. “Another reason would be to add diversity. Maybe they have a monoculture of bermudagrass, and they want to add some diversity to that.”
3. Johnson says, “Probably the best-case scenario to plant is that they want to extend the grazing season,” he says, to have more forage growing when their perennial warm-season grass pasture is dormant.

It’s important to consider, however, whether or not putting in a cover crop is always the best solution to covering ground or adding diversity, Johnson says.

AM Radio Essential in Rural America, Groups Say

On Tuesday, the Rural & Agriculture Council of America (RACA) and seven other organizations representing rural and agricultural interests wrote a letter to Congressional leaders in support of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act. This bill would require vehicles manufactured in, or imported into, the U.S. to have devices installed that provide access to AM radio.

In the letter, the groups say, “AM radio is an essential communications medium in rural America. Local news, weather, and sports reporters are recognized as respected sources for information that affects the lives of millions of rural residents.”

Other organizations signing onto the letter include the Latino Farmers & Ranchers International, Inc., Livestock Marketing Association, National Grange, National Farmers Union, U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, Independent Cattlemen’s Association of Texas, and the North Dakota Farmers Union.

To read the letter, click here.

Manure Scoring with OSU’s Mark Johnson

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 talks about manure scoring.

At this time of year, producers with spring calving herds are in the process of managing cows for the next calving season in 2024. With warm season grasses going dormant and losing nutritional quality. There are a couple of convenient management tools we can use to ensure we are meeting our cow’s nutritional requirements. The first is body condition scoring cows and the second is to monitor manure consistency. By monitoring body condition score (BCS) across our entire cowherd, on a regular basis, we can monitor the plane of nutrition over the long-term.

This will answer the question “What condition are my cows in, and are they gaining, maintaining or losing condition?” The goal is to have cows in a BCS 5 at calving (on a 1-9 scale). If cows are in adequate condition (BCS 5 or higher) and maintaining, no immediate nutritional changes are needed. However, if cows are in poor condition (BCS less than 5) or losing condition, nutritional management changes are needed requiring the addition of protein supplemental and/or energy so that BCS does not drop below 5 before calving. If the cows are in BCS greater than 5 and maintaining, the nutrition program is more than adequate.

Maui Fires Show the Need (once again) for Fire Planning and Wildfire Fuel Load Reduction

There is a new blog post out at the Southern Plains Perspective. Read below! The Southern Plains Perspective is authored by Clay Pope- who farms with his wife Sarah and is a contractor for the USDA Southern Plains Climate Hub in the area of outreach.  

Wildfires-It’s no surprise that this is the topic that comes up again and again when you talk about adapting to the changing climate. After all, wildfires are pretty scary and unlike tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms and the like, you rarely have the advanced warnings about how weather conditions are developing just right for an extreme event (although that is changing—actually wrote about the developing early warning systems for wildfires not to long ago. You can read it here).  Wildfires are horribly destructive and are definitely on the rise as our rainfall patterns change.  And no recent tragedy shows this more than the fires that plagued Maui, Hawaii in August.

It’s been two months since fires broke out on Maui and decimated the historic town of Lahaina, leaving 115 dead and a community changed forever. This catastrophic wildfire is now considered the deadliest in the U.S. in over a century. And while many factors contributed to this terrible event, one thing clearly stands out—the presence of large amounts of invasive vegetation that created a fuel source for the fire.