According to the latest Oklahoma drought monitor report, exceptional drought remains at zero percent, unchanged from the start of the calendar year.

Extreme drought or worse remains at zero percent, unchanged from last week.

Severe drought or worse has decreased to 9.38 percent, down from 41.55 percent last week.

Moderate drought or worse, decreased to 47.05 percent, down from 67.84 percent last week.

Abnormally dry or worse have decreased to 81.78 percent, down from 92.26 percent last week.

As for our neighbors, heavy precipitation – in some areas for the second consecutive week – soaked a swath from Louisiana and eastern Texas northward through much of the Lower and Middle Mississippi Valley and the Tennessee Valley. A broad swath reaching as far west as central Arkansas recorded at least 1.5 inches in most places, with some areas recording much higher amounts (3 to 8 inches in part of western Tennessee, and over a foot in parts of central Louisiana). This resulted in reductions in dryness and drought severity across affected areas of the Lower Mississippi Valley and eastern Texas, with some 2-class improvements imposed in a small part of both southwestern Louisiana and an area straddling southwesternmost Mississippi and adjacent southeastern Louisiana.  

Little or no precipitation was observed from parts of southeastern Oklahoma southward through Deep South Texas, and across western Texas as well. Dryness and drought worsened in some of the areas, with the most widespread deterioration noted in western Texas.

Kansas Drought Monitor shows Moderate Drought shrinking from 53.69 percent last week to 33.05 this week. Texas Drought ratings saw a decrease from 68.08 percent a week ago to 59.66 percent.

Click here for the Kansas Drought Monitor Page and Click here for the Texas Drought Monitor Page.

Latest Trump Pick- North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to Interior

President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to run the Interior Department and help steer the energy policy he’s pledged will drive up oil and gas drilling.

“We’re going do things with energy and with land — Interior — that is going to be incredible,” Trump told an audience at Mar A Lago. Bergum “is going to head the Department of Interior and he’s going to be fantastic.”

Interior has significant impact in rural America- and is the home of the US Fish and Wildlife Service(think ESA- Lesser Prairie Chicken and more) as well as the Bureau for Land Management.

The President-elect says the formal announcement is coming Friday morning.

The Oklahoma Agriculture Mediation Program knows this is a hard time for farmers and ranchers. We want you to know we are still open, and we are still here for you. The Ag Mediation program is a free service that provides mediation to agriculture producers who may need help with ag-related disputes.

At Oklahoma Ag Mediation, we have been helping people in agriculture resolve conflicts since 1987. We know firsthand about working together to resolve conflicts, so you don’t have to go through the court systems. Let our professional mediators help you. Mediation is allowed for lease issues, farmer/neighbor disputes, family farm transitions, and more. These services are available at no cost for Oklahoma farmers and ranchers in all 77 counties. For more information, you can go to ok.gov/mediation, or give us a call at 800 248 5465.

Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, spoke with the Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Ethan Lane about the presidential election.

President-Elect Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate in twenty years to win the popular vote, and Lane said that the political realm is still digesting the implications of that outcome.

“What do those new voters to the Republican tent view as priority? Are they aligned with more traditional Republicans or our rural Republican voter?” Lane mused. “What kind of impact will that have on this new Trump administration? This isn’t 2016 when they were figuring out where the light switches are. These folks know where to go, and what they wish they would have done last time. It’s going to be interesting to see what sort of mandate we will see coming out of this vote really means for Donald Trump and his administration moving into the next couple of years,”

Trump earned high percentages of various unexpected voting groups like Hispanics, women, and African American men. “We are in a new world here,” Lane said. “It is not aligned with those traditional party lines.”

The Future of Ag Labor: NASDA’s RJ Karney on H-2A Reform

At the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Convention, Farm Director KC Sheperd caught up with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture’s (NASDA) Senior Director of Public Policy, RJ Karney, to discuss H-2A reform and the crisis in ag labor.

“The ag labor discussion has been one of the top, if not the top, priority amongst all of the agricultural industry for the past one or two decades,” Karney stated. “If we don’t have H-2A reform, there will be economic and supply chain impacts.”

He said broadening H-2A reform to include industries that aren’t currently eligible to participate is the focus of NASDA. Specifically, the livestock and dairy industries that require year-round laborers.

“Agriculture is currently unified in telling members of Congress and President-Elect Trump as he is coming into office that we have a workable solution, and we would like to see that addressed,” Karney added.

This week on SUNUP, OSU Agriculture Economist Dr. John Michael Riley discusses the highs and lows of current grain and cotton markets after the World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates Report was released last week.

He said that soybeans earned the headline of the day when its 51.7 bushels per acre yield was reported, down 1.4 bushels per acre from a month ago and 1.1 lower than expected. Ending stocks were 470 million bushels, down 80 bushels from a month prior, and 62 bushels lower than expected.

“We were thinking that would happen because of the dryness across the Midwest and the corn belt,” Riley said. “As the numbers were coming in, we were seeing the numbers drop.”

Corn earned the subtitle when USDA reported 183.1 bushels per acre, down 0.7 bushels from the previous month, and 0.6 bushels lower than the trade. Reported ending stocks 1.938 billion bushels, down 61 million bushels from last month, and 8 million lower than the trade expected.

McDonald’s USA, one of the largest fast food restaurant chains, Lopez Foods, a multi-protein producer and long-term supplier to McDonald’s, and Syngenta North America, a leader in agricultural technology, today announced a collaboration that aims to increase feed efficiency and help reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released per pound of meat produced, as part of efforts to improve the sustainability of beef production.

Enogen® corn is an in-seed innovation available exclusively from Syngenta, that has been shown to increase feed efficiency in cattle and thereby help reduce emissions intensity compared to other corn.

“At Syngenta, we’re convinced improving the sustainability of the global food system can be accelerated through innovation and collaboration,” said Justin Wolfe, President of Syngenta Seeds. “We’re proud of the great attributes of our Enogen® corn, and how our work can help enable McDonald’s and their beef supply chain to deliver impact.”

Ambitious climate commitments mean that companies like McDonald’s and Lopez Foods may need to invest in climate-smart technologies like Enogen® corn. “McDonald’s is starting with a priority ingredient for our company – beef,” said Kendra Levine, Director of US Sustainability for McDonald’s. “We believe the innovative collaboration with Syngenta is an opportunity to help us make progress toward our science-based climate targets.”

The National Livestock Companies are pleased to announce their support, once again, for the All American Beef Battalion (AABB).

On Monday, December 16th, the Oklahoma National Stockyards will auction a calf for the benefit of the AABB, along with National Livestock providing lunch for those in attendance. The AABB crew is bringing in their cooker and will be preparing a ribeye lunch. Lunch will begin at 11:00 a.m. and the actual sale will take place at approximately 12:30 p.m. in the sale arena of the Stockyards.

The calf to be auctioned is again being donated by 3C Cattle Feeders and the Clyde Runyan family of Mill Creek, Oklahoma. A very special thanks go out to Penny, along with her sons Casey and Bear, who have donated the calf for 11 years. Clyde was with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam and always considered this as a privilege to be able to give back to the troops. Runyan passed away in 2019 and his family continues the legacy of donating the calf in his honor.