The 2015  Auctions of five year leases of land owned by Oklahoma and managed by the Commissioners of the Land Office begin this afternoon. 

Leases in Beaver County will be auctioned at the Beaver County Fairgrounds at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon- October 19th. 21 Tracts of land will be offered.

Cimarron County leases will be offered at 9:00 a.m. October 20th at the Cimarron County Fairgrounds in Boise City- with 35 tracts of land up for bids.  Some of the leases that will be bid on in Boise City include land that were the subject of the independent film Lone Man's Land that was released last year. 

Bidding for Texas County leases begins at 2:00 p.m. at the Texas County Fairgrounds in Guymon, also on Tuesday, October 20th. Twenty eight tracts of land will be offered Tuesday afternoon.


The biggest auction of the week happens Wednesday in Woodward. Leases in Harper, Ellis, Woodward, Major, Dewey and Woods counties will be offered on October 21st at 10:00 a.m. at the High Plains Vo-Tech in Woodward. There will be 84 tracts of land to be leased to the highest bidder on Wednesday.

For more information- you can call the Commission office at (405) 521-4000 or 1-888-35-LANDS. Details of each tract being offered can be seen online at the CLO website- click here to jump there.

About a week ago- we talked with Harry Birdwell about the legacy of the School Land and how the money raised is used for common education (and higher education) in the state- click here to see our TV conversation with Harry as well as a chance to listen to our off camera audio interview as well.

The cattle market collapse began in the slaughter cattle markets and the wholesale boxed beef prices and spread into the yearling and stocker markets in early August, through September and into the early days of October. The live cattle and feeder cattle futures plunged faster than the cash markets, resulting in the live trades chasing the futures even lower.


That all began to change about a week ago as the futures changed course and staged a big rally. The limited cash cattle trade in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle as reported by the Texas Cattle Feeders Association was significantly higher the past two Fridays- up seven dollars October 9th and another eight dollars higher this past Friday- and the major auction markets in Oklahoma- the Oklahoma National Stockyards and OKC West in El Reno have had big rallies in their yearling and calf trade in their most recent sales.


The plunge and now the retracing of the cash markets back up to some degree has a great deal to do with the currentness of the cattle ready for slaughter. According to OSU Livestock Market Economist Dr. Derrell Peel, the feedlots and packers pulled the overall cattle market over the proverbial cliff because of beef industry carcasses that were too heavy and resulted in too much tonnage- and that killed the slaughter cattle market, forced live cattle and feeder cattle futures to plummet and resulted in multiple weeks where we saw yearling and calf prices drop double digits.

Derrell is our Beef Buzz guest and you can hear his comments on the collapse and coming back by clicking here.

By the way- our complete interview with Dr. Peel from this past week at the American Angus Boot Camp can be hear by clicking here.

After claiming that multiple years of surveys of prisoners had culminated in the decision to eliminate pork from the menus of Federal prisons- the Bureau of Prisons has reversed that decision just days after it became public knowledge and just hours after Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter demanding details of those surveys that the Bureau had used to pull pork from the menus.

In his letter dated last Thursday- Senator Grassley wrote "I am writing to express my concerns regarding the decision made by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to remove all pork products from federal prison menus. Although this decision apparently was made several months ago, it was only made public upon the start of the new fiscal year.

"According to a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, the decision was based on a survey of prisoners' food preferences that reflected that pork has been the "lowest-rated food" by inmates for a number of years.

"To corroborate the validity of the claim that prisoners indicated a lack of interest in pork products, I am requesting copies of the prisoner surveys and responses that were used to support the determination to no longer serve pork in federal prisons. Additionally, the spokesman indicated that pork had been the lowest rated food, "for several years." Please supply the surveys and responses dating back as far as prisoners may have indicated their dislike for pork products. In addition, please provide a line item description of the costs incurred to conduct each survey performed."

Senator Grassley is the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee- and has oversight over the Bureau of Prisons.  With apologies to the Junior Senator from Iowa for stealing her campaign slogan- it seems that the Senior Senator from that state made these bureaucrats squeal.

Click here to read more about the return of the pork roast.

The October 2015 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out. The Food Demand Survey is a monthly study conducted by Oklahoma State University's Ag Economics Department- FooDS is coordinated by Dr. Jayson Lusk and he offers the following analysis of what the respondents were saying this month.


"There were sizable declines in willingness-to-pay (WTP) for all food products; meat and non-meat alike. At this point, it's unclear what is driving the decline because other measures on the survey, such as food expenditures both at home and away from home remained steady and slightly increased. In the coming months, I hope to find time to do some serious analysis on effects of seasonality and day-of-week effects given that we now have about two and a half years of data.


"Another notable result from the survey is a decline in price expectations for beef, pork, and poultry. In some cases, the percentage of people anticipating higher prices is less than half of what it was a year ago at this time.


"Consumers reported hearing more about antibiotics and less about Salmonella in the news this month."

More about this month's survey can be read by clicking or tapping here.  In our story- we also have links back to the details of the October report and links to previous surveys from Dr. Lusk.

The folks at Oklahoma State University have been working on the idea of initially processing sweet sorghum right in the field for biofuel- then shipping the liquid from the field for further refining.

Dr. Rob Whitely of the OSU School of Chemical Engineering has been working on a project that shows that sweet sorghum will not foul up processing equipment like corn will.

His study, "Multi-scale Fouling Characterization of Fermented/Hydrolyzed Sweet Sorghum," answers a key question regarding the economic viability of decentralized production of sweet sorghum as an energy crop. The amount of solids in fermented sweet sorghum is approximately 2 weight percent, compared to 20 weight percent in fermented corn mash.

"Based strictly on solids content, one would expect the fouling problem using sweet sorghum to be 10 times less than that of corn," he said.

However, Whiteley and his team have not observed any significant fouling to date in their farm-scale Alcohol Separation Unit. This result has been confirmed in the laboratory, where no significant fouling was measured in a heat exchanger tube (one of the most likely deposition locales).

"In fact, our studies showed that fouling from fermented sweet sorghum was no greater than that measured for tap water," Whiteley said. "We attribute this finding to the fact that the sweet sorghum bioethanol process is essentially starch-free."

These results confirm the production of bioethanol from sweet sorghum can be accomplished without the costly downtime and maintenance associated with corn-ethanol.

More on this research is available here.

This past Thursday in Des Moines, the World Food Prize organization honored Sir Fazle Hasan Abed of Bangladesh as the World Food Prize Laureate. As the founder and chairperson of BRAC, formerly known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, he has grown the organization into the world's largest non-governmental organization, enhancing food security and providing 150 million people with the opportunity to improve their lives. His approach to development has addressed the connection between hunger and poverty, including the development of food security programs that have helped more than half of a million farmers gain access to proven technologies, efficient farming methods and financial support services.

The scale and impact of BRAC's work in Bangladesh and 10 other countries is unprecedented. Under his leadership of more than 40 years, BRAC's agricultural and development innovations have improved food security for millions and contributed to a significant decline in poverty levels through direct impacts to farmers and small communities across the globe. BRAC has provided opportunity for nearly150 million people worldwide.

Read more about the work of Sir Abed by clicking here.

There seems to be a really good rain event headed for Oklahoma and Texas the second half of this week- best chances in southwest Oklahoma are Wednesday night through Friday- and the forecast map shows south central and southeastern Oklahoma will be in on the rainfall by late Thursday into Friday as well.

Some rainfall totals now being predicted by the Weather gurus exceed four inches.

Here's the latest national rainfall map for the next seven days- and it looks encouraging:




Thirty to seventy percent chances of rain being predicted at this point- mainly in the southern half of state.

Of course- before we get there- there is high fire danger across much of the state today- with warm temps, wind and low humidity all combining to be a potential problem.