From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 04:41
To: ron@oklahomafarmreport.com
Subject: Oklahoma's Farm News Update
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Oklahoma's latest farm and ranch news
Your Update from Ron Hays of RON for Monday December 4, 2006
A service of Midwest Farm Shows
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-- National Cattlemen's Beef Association calls on President Bush to intervene with South Korea!
-- Don't expect a new farm bill until the last quarter of 2007- at best!
-- Dale DeWitt will head Natural Resources Committee in State House in 2007.
-- The U.S. Wheat Industry issues a response to the AWB Kickback Report
-- Tulsa Farm Show cranks up this Thursday
-- FREE Disposal of Pesticides this Wednesday in Altus.
-- We salute the winners of the 62nd annual Oklahoma Farmers Union Speech Contest!

Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. Our email this morning is a service of Midwest Farm Shows, featuring the Tulsa Farm Show December 7-9, 2006 and the Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City April 19-21, 2007. Check out details of both of these exciting shows at the official website of Midwest Farm Shows by clicking here.

If you have received this by someone forwarding it to you, you are welcome to subscribe and get this weekday update sent to you directly by clicking here.


National Cattlemen's Beef Association calls on President Bush to intervene with South Korea!
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A letter was being sent this past Friday by the NCBA to President George W. Bush, calling on the President to intercede on behalf of the U.S. beef cattle industry with South Korea and what appears to be a deliberate effort to effectively ban U.S. beef after claiming they were opening their market almost a year ago.

There have now been two small shipments of U.S. beef that have been airlifted to Seoul- and both of those shipments have been held up until Korean inspectors have been able to find a tiny bone fragment in order to declare the entire shipment unworthy of being accepted into the South Korean market. This latest shipment came from a small processor in Nebraska- and was directly supervised by their Korean customer as the order was assembled in their plant here in the United States.

Lead lobbyist for the NCBA, Jay Truitt, says that cattle producers regret the fact that this has turned into a political statement by the Koreans and says that the only response left seems to have a high ranking U.S. official call the South Koreans on their making up the standards without any regard for internationally accepted science. You can click below to hear Jay's comments on this subject that has been pushed into the arena of stupid by the Koreans with their made up standards.

Click here to hear Ron's conversation with Jay Truitt of NCBA.


Don't expect a new farm bill until the last quarter of 2007- at best!
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With the changing of the political guard in Washington- OSU Ag Policy professor Dr. Michael Dicks says that he does not see any chance of getting real progress on a farm bill package in the first half of 2007. He says that with the Republicans deciding to defer on the bulk of the FY 2007 Appropriations Bills until next year- that means the Democrats have to reorganize and get Committees and offices up and running-immediately deal with the FY 2007 Appropriations, then look over the FY 2008 Budget proposals of the Administration and get to work on those budgets, deal with Immigration and negotiate budget baselines for things like farm policy. We have to get that Budget baseline for the farm bill before any meaningful policy can be developed. We might not have that number until midyear.

Dicks does not see activists groups all that organized at this point- so he does not see any major deviation from the current policy. He does believes that Senator Harkin of Iowa, the new Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, will continue to push to move money over to the Conservation Security Program- the so called Green Payments program- and issues like Payment Limits will resurface during the 2007 debate.

As far as a timeline is concerned- he thinks an optimistic view for completion is next fall- but adds that will be very difficult to achieve. He has heard that the Democrats are saying that they plan to really allow the sub-committees to do their work in the respective areas- and then allow the full committee to merely review the overall package. You can hear our conversation with Michael Dicks by clicking below.

Click here for the full conversation with Dr. Mike Dicks of OSU on farm policy considerations.


Dale DeWitt will head Natural Resources Committee in State House in 2007.
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An Ag industry lobbyist has told us that if you are promoting ag issues at the state capitol- you should be feeling positively giddy today with the word that Republican Dale DeWitt of Braman will be Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee- one of the ten "main" committees under the new House structure for 2007.

DeWitt will have three subcommittees under his Natural Resources Committee- with Don Armes of Faxon to be the Chairman of the Agriculture and Commerce Subcommittee; Phil Richardson of Minco to chair the Environment and Wildlife subcommittee while Democrat Terry Hyman of Leon to chair the Tourism and Recreation Subcommittee. Hyman will be one of three Democrats chairing one of the House subcommittees.

House Leaders say that all work will start in the subcommittees, then be considered by the full committee before going to the full House. We have been told that it was very important that we have the Committee Chairs named as that will help with the prefiling of bills as we are facing a deadline of December 8th for that activity.


The U.S. Wheat Industry issues a response to the AWB Kickback Report
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At the end of this past week, there was a joint statement issued by the national Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates in response to the Cole Panel report that confirmed that the AWB, Ltd paid over $221 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government to corner the wheat trade under the U.N. based Food for Oil program.

That statement says “The U.S. wheat industry is pleased with the completion of the Cole Inquiry into corruption on the part of AWB and its subsidiaries in association with the Iraq Oil-for-Food program. We commend the Australian government for initiating this inquiry and Commissioner Cole and his staff for their thorough efforts. This report provides copious evidence of wrongdoing on the part of AWB that, as the report suggests, requires further, criminal investigations."

It adds “In addition to the Cole Inquiry’s focus on Australian law, there is ample reason to suspect that AWB, through its U.S. subsidiary, abused U.S. government programs at the expense of taxpayers and may have violated U.S. law. The industry is very pleased that the Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns has taken the step to resume the process of debarring AWB (USA), Ltd. from participation in our government’s export credit programs and that members of Congress have indicated a willingness to look into the impact of AWB’s actions in the U.S. NAWG and U.S. Wheat Associates are asking for and working cooperatively with both the Bush Administration and Congress to initiate appropriate investigations into any such abuses. Though AWB’s position as a state trading enterprise was not a focus of the Cole Inquiry, the U.S. wheat industry has long been opposed to state trading enterprises like AWB and will continue to work to remove them as barriers to free and open world wheat trade.”

Click here to be able to review the full Cole report for yourself


Tulsa Farm Show cranks up this Thursday
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Two seminars are being planned by OSU Extension at this week's Tulsa Farm Show in Expo Square. On Thursday, Dec. 7th. at 1:00 p.m. the first seminar will be on Forage Production and Surviving Weather Cycles with Bob Woods, OSU Area Extension Agronomy Specialist, Northeastern Oklahoma.

On Friday Dec. 8th at 1:00 p.m. the second of the two seminars will be on Vaccine Decisions for Stockmen with Dr. David Sparks, DVM. OSU Area Food Animal Health Specialist, Northeastern Oklahoma.

The Tulsa Farm Show is in its 13rd year- and this year it happens December 7th through the 9th. Admission and parking are free. We have linked below straight to the Tulsa Farm Show web page.

Click here for more on the Tulsa Farm Show that starts Thursday!


FREE Disposal of Pesticides this Wednesday in Altus.
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Oklahoma agricultural producers, commercial and non- commercial applicators and pesticide dealers can get rid of unwanted pesticides this Wednesday, Dec. 6 at Humphrey’s Coop Elevator as part of the Oklahoma Unwanted Pesticide Disposal Program. Humphrey’s Coop Elevator is located at 2109 Asphalt Rd. in Altus, south of Highway 62. Pesticide collection will take place 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can bring and dump up to 2,500 pounds of pesticide materials for free.

Unwanted pesticides are those that are unusable as originally intended for a variety of reasons, including leftover pesticides, pesticides that are no longer registered in Oklahoma and pesticides that no longer have labels or are no longer identifiable. “Only commercial and farm-type pesticides will be taken, not those typically used by homeowners,” said Charles Luper, Extension associate with the Oklahoma State University Pesticide Safety Education Program. “Other items such as paint, batteries and oil also will not be accepted.”

For additional information, visit the OSU Pesticide Safety Education Program site on the Internet or contact Charles Luper at 405-744-5808 or Sandy Wells at 405-522-5993. We have linked the OSU Education site below.

Click here for the OSU Pesticide Safety Education Program website.


We salute the winners of the 62nd annual Oklahoma Farmers Union Speech Contest!
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We have linked the full set of winners from Saturday in Stillwater from the OFU State Speech Contest. Senior Division winners include Nikki Holt of Kingfisher in Ag Policy; Katie Smith Elgin in Agribusiness; John- Kyle Truitt of Jenks in Natural resources; Breanna Cary of Hollis in Student Organizations and Jenna Good of Elgin in OFU.

In the Intermediate Division- Ashton Mese of Kingfisher won in Ag Policy; Mitch Williams of Hollis won in Agribusiness; Taylor Tucker of Calera in Natural Resources; Emma Johnson of Big Pasture won in Student Organizations and Ben Hudgens of Burlington won in the OFU speech category.

In the Junior Division, Taylor Fort of Elgin claimed top honors in Ag Policy; Cody Slater of Fairview topped Agribusiness; Holly Glass of Elgin won in Natural Resources; Taylor Dunham of Chattanooga won in the Student Organizations category and Chancey Schoeppel of Fairview had the best Junior Speech about OFU. In the Novice Division, the winner was Katie Lippolat of Kingfisher.

Click here for the top three winners in each category in the OFU Speech Contest.


Our thanks to Midwest Farm Shows for their support of our daily Farm News Update. Go to their website at the link at the top of today's email for more information on either the Tulsa Farm Show or the Southern Plains Farm Show.

We also invite you to check out our website at the link below to check out an archive of these daily emails, audio reports and top farm news story links from around the globe.

Click here to check out WWW.OklahomaFarmReport.Com



God Bless! You can reach us at the following:
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phone: 405-473-6144
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