Two high-speed internet expansion projects worth $4.8 million were launched Tuesday afternoon in the town of Slick in Creek County by the Oklahoma Broadband Office (OBO) and ecoLINK fiber services. 

The projects, funded through $2.9 million in federal grants administered by the OBO coupled with $1.9 million in matching funds from ecoLINK, a subsidiary of East Central Electric Coop, will connect 265 homes and businesses in Creek County with broadband internet using fiber optic technology. The awards from ARPA State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) were made earlier this year by the Oklahoma Broadband Governing Board.

After the ceremony at the Slick Baptist Church, Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays got on the phone with Mike Sanders of the Oklahoma Broadband Office to talk about this and other projects like this that are bringing high speed internet to rural Oklahoma. 



Sanders was especially excited about this project bringing broadband to a community that has never had this type of service before. He told Hays “Expanding broadband access in Slick and throughout rural Oklahoma will unlock new opportunities for education, healthcare, and business, fostering growth and innovation. This investment ensures that every resident can get connected and thrive in the modern digital age.”

Invenergy is committed to Oklahoma, having completed its first project in the state in 2006. Today, Invenergy operates three wind energy centers in our state, employs over 60 Oklahomans and continues investing in our project communities. We believe building relationships is the key to being good community partners and we work to develop relationships to benefit our landowners, our employees, and our communities.

We invest in Oklahomans, and we take pride in their success. Our energy facilities provide jobs, tax revenues, landowner payments and other sources of local economic development.

For more information, visit www.InvenergyOklahoma.com

Two years into a five-year, $19 million research project investigating grazing management systems and their impact on ecosystems and producer well-being, a multi-institution team co-led by Noble Research Institute reports significant progress in data collection, added intensive monitoring at producer sites, and early insights gained from work completed through 2023. 

Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and its Drivers, also known as the 3M project, is described as one of the most robust investigations of ecosystem function across time and space, diversity of landscapes and gradients of grazing management.

“The 3M team continues to earnestly work on sites from Oklahoma to Texas up to Colorado and Wyoming and over to Michigan,” said Dr. Jason Rowntree, C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University and project co-lead. “Across this geological spread, we coordinate intensive samplings across more than 60 sites that result in hundreds of ecological samples, including soil cores, forage samples, energy flux measurements, and water impact-related measurements.”

Uniting the Beef Industry: How Jan Lyons Helped Lead Through the Mad Cow Crisis

During her time in service as Chairman of the Cattleman’s Beef Board and National Cattleman’s Beef Association President, Jan Lyons represented the industry to the public during the Cow That Stole Christmas debacle of 2003 into 2004. Her handling of it was one of the many things she did to earn the Visionary Award at the Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting this past summer. See more about that in part one of this conversation.

“We had a great network set up at that time with the State Beef Councils, Veterinarians, Farm Bureau people… it was just an all-hand-on-deck moment. The producers, also, were up to date on the talking points. We stayed on unified messages that were based on sound facts, so that was the story that was sent."

She said that the best news was that everyone in the industry pulled together and played a part. Also, rather than devastating the market, the incident reinforced and elevated the confidence that consumers had in the safety of beef. 

Lyons maintains immense confidence in the industry and was especially impressed with the news of the $13.41 return on investment from the use of Beef Checkoff dollars. “We’ve gotten excellent returns, and in order for us to have places for our children and grandchildren, we have to grow demand. It is about taking care of our consumers, and providing them with what they want.”

The Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa brings together the latest innovations, demos, and industry leaders. While there, Maci Carter visited with Steve Hasselman, a certified Crop Advisor at Agoro Carbon Alliance, to talk about the company and what the Agoro Carbon representatives hope to accomplish at the Farm Progress show.

The voluntary carbon market is comprised of companies that have taken voluntary pledges to be emissions-neutral by a certain date. For most of those companies, it isn’t possible to reach that status without buying offsets from companies like the Agoro Carbon Alliance.

“We are a carbon credit company working in ag in both the row crop and range and pasture settings,” Hasselman explained. “We are kind of the conduit in carbon credit, so we connect the industry that needs to buy these carbon offsets to meet their emissions goals, and we can funnel those funds down to farmers and ranchers that are willing to take on various new ag conservation practices.”

He said that the Agoro Carbon Alliance uses a combination of modeling and soil sampling to develop how much carbon is being built in the soil through organic matter.

He advised visiting the website at agorocarbon.com to find more information, resources for the promoted practices, and contact information for a salesman to obtain an estimate of how much money could be gained. “You will have a live person to help you every step of the way and throughout the duration of the contract,” he assured.

In the summer of 2024, two big price changes occurred in corn and soybean markets. First, price levels declined, beginning in June and continuing to the present. Figure 1 shows new-crop corn and soybean futures for delivery during the upcoming fall harvest period (the December 2024 corn and November 2024 soybean contracts) both fell by about 20% between the last week of May and late August.

The second big change over the same May to August period was the increase in calendar spreads, the difference between the price for delivery in early 2025 to the fall 2024 harvest-time price. Figure 2 shows the spread between March 2025 and harvest-time contracts roughly tripled for soybeans and doubled for corn. While the increase in soybean spreads was concurrent to the price decline, corn spreads only really began to increase in late June. This article discusses the implications of larger spreads for commodity marketing in the post-harvest period.

The explanation for lower prices and larger spreads is straightforward. The market will be adequately supplied in the near term. The coming US corn and soybean crop is expected to be historically large. No substantive new demand has emerged to meet this increase in supply. As such, spreads must rise so futures markets may perform one of their principal functions, allocating grain that is abundant now to post-harvest time periods where it is less so by incentivizing enough storage. The spread is commonly called the ‘carry’, since it represents the return to the act of ‘carrying’ or storing the grain over time.

USDA Launches Online Debt Consolidation Tool to Increase Farmer and Rancher Financial Viability

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing the launch of the Debt Consolidation Tool, an innovative online tool available through farmers.gov that allows agricultural producers to enter their farm operating debt and evaluate the potential savings that might be provided by obtaining a debt consolidation loan with USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) or a local lender.  

“Providing producers with options to structure their debt in a manner that affords them every opportunity to meet the goals of their agricultural operation is the best way to ensure the nation’s farmers and ranchers build financial equity and resilience,” said FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux.   

A debt consolidation loan is a new loan used to pay off other existing operating loans or lines of credit that might have unreasonable rates and terms. By combining multiple eligible debts into a single, larger loan, borrowers may obtain more favorable payment terms such as a lower interest rate or lower payments. Consolidating debt may also provide farmers and ranchers additional cash flow flexibilities.  

USDA encourages producers to reach out to their local FSA farm loan staff to ensure they fully understand the wide range of loan and servicing options available to assist with starting, expanding, or maintaining their agricultural operation. To conduct business with FSA, please contact your local USDA Service Center.  

Feeding Quality Forum: High-Quality Beef Production Takes Focus

The world has changed, cattle have changed and those managing them must keep up. The 19th annual Certified Angus Beef (CAB) Feeding Quality Forum in Dodge City, Kan., gave 260 attendees tools and information to do just that.

Farm revenue is down $69 billion, or 37%, since 2022.

Yet, the beef sector remains a bright spot. Cow-calf margins are estimated at more than $500 per head, and retail meat prices are at record highs. Since 2017, only 14 months have shown month-to-month declines.

“We are truly offering our customers to consumer a much better-quality product today than we ever have before, and it’s responsible, I think, for that retail price increase trend,” he said.

Today, 22% of all fed cattle qualify for the Certified Angus Beef ® brand, but there’s still room for improvement. A full 10% of all Angus-type cattle entering packing plants today miss the brand’s standards by just 30 degrees of marbling.

Shifting the grade makeup would add $46.94 per head to all cattle sold on a carcass basis versus the industry average, Dykstra said. Taking it a step further, improving the average marbling by 70 points would move the average to 20% USDA Prime and the premiums for the entire group to $65.74 per head.

To view presentations or for more information, visit www.FeedingQualityForum.com.