Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. We are pleased to have American Farmers & Ranchers Mutual Insurance Company as a regular sponsor of our daily update- click here to go to their AFR web site to learn more about their efforts to serve rural America!

It is also great to have as an annual sponsor on our daily email Johnston Enterprises- proud to be serving agriculture across Oklahoma and around the world since 1893. For more on Johnston Enterprises- click here for their website!
And we are proud to have P & K Equipment/ P & K Wind Energy as our newest regular sponsor of our daily email update. P & K is the premiere John Deere dealer in Oklahoma, with nine locations to serve you, and the P & K team are excited about their new Wind Power program, as they offer Endurance Wind Power wind turbines. Click here for more from the P&K website.

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.

One note to those of you that have Pioneer as your Internet provider. I understand some are getting the emails, others are getting them a day or more late and others are not getting them hardly at all. As you see these notes about Pioneer(the folks with a pldi.net email address- please let us know when you have problems and exactly what those problems are. I am planning over this weekend and into the first of next week to move all of our Pioneer email addresses to an alternate way of receiving this email- won't affect anything except hopefully except improve service to those with this address. One of our stories this week has been about money coming for rural broadband- perhaps some competition for your business as quality of service improves could be a good thing. Also- thanks to all of you that have contacted Pioneer and have read them the "riot act."

A few of the tips that USDA wants everyone to remember include:
Thaw meat and poultry before smoking it.
Never defrost food at room temperature.
Use the microwave oven for rapid thawing, but smoke or grill the meat immediately because some areas may begin to cook during the defrosting.
Always marinate food in the refrigerator, not on the counter.
When taking food off the grill, use a clean platter. Don't put cooked food on the same platter that held raw meat or poultry. Any harmful bacteria present in the raw meat juices could contaminate safely cooked food.

There's a lot more information that USDA has put together in a couple of news releases- we have details of all of this for you to review and to share with others that are consumers of our good Oklahoma farm producers this holiday weekend. Click on the link below- Enjoy- and be safe.

Click here for the Drill for the Grill information from FSIS and USDA

"We always strive to provide our customers with the best," Roach shares about bringing in the Prime Natural line. "We wanted a 'never, ever' program because that's an important factor to our customers. And, we wanted to give them a premium choice in the natural beef category." Reasor's is the first retailer in the country to offer consumers the new Certified Angus Beef brand Prime Natural. To earn the elite brand name, beef must meet nine more stringent quality standards than USDA Prime, and it must adhere to a strict "never, ever" policy. Cattle are never given hormones or antibiotics, ever, and cattle are raised on a vegetarian diet.

Roach raises pecans as well as Angus cattle in eastern Oklahoma- so he believes in this product as not just a supermarket executive- but also as a cattle producer. We have more on this announcement made in recent days by Reasors- a chain found in the northeastern quadrant of our state- just click on the link below. You can also explore the rest of their website while you are there if you would like to gain some perspective on a well run small supermarket chain that is doing well here in Oklahoma.

Click here for more on the Never Ever Beef Now Offered in Oklahoma From the Certified Angus Beef Folks

According to White - the minimum requirement for the new CSP is meeting one resource of concerns on the entire operation. An example is meeting soil erosion on an entire farm. The states will determine what the resources of concern are - so while air quality might be a resource of concern in California - it might not be in Alaska. White says a producer also must be willing to meet one additional priority resource of concern within the five-year contract.

The new Conservation Stewardship Program can enroll 12.7-million acres each year from 2009 to 2012 at a national average of 18-dollars per acre. But White says USDA won't know what the reimbursement per acre will be until they've had the first signup. Future signups will offer a fixed national price per acre for each type of land based on that first signup.

Biden says this announcement is a first step toward realizing President Obama's vision of a nationwide 21st century communications infrastructure that encourages economic growth, enhances America's global competitiveness and helps address many of America's most pressing challenges. According to U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack - the funding is a down payment on the President's commitment to bring the educational and economic benefits of the Internet to all communities.

Biden announced public workshops sponsored by Commerce and USDA will be held this month in Massachusetts, West Virginia, Minnesota, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Montana, New Mexico and California to inform applicants about available funding. Details, application forms and application guidelines are also available online(Click below to jump there)- and I would suspect that this will be one of the early priorities of Ryan McMullen, the new State Director in Oklahoma for the USDA's Rural Development Office.

Click here for more on the Rural Broadband website set up by the Obama Administration as they begin to seek ways to spend monies for this important piece of infrastructure for rural America.

OSU Beef cattle Specialist Dr. Glenn Selk says that this program, along with the companion Oklahoma Super Gold program, can be a real asset to cow-calf producers who need to get some weight gains on heifers before you breed them for the first time.

Click on the link below- and you can go and listen to what Dr. Selk has to say about the program- and how either Oklahoma Gold or Oklahoma Super Gold might work for you in getting those first time heifers in better shape for breeding season. Also at this link- we link to an old but still very good informational sheet on the Oklahoma Gold program authored by our old friend Dr. Don Gill.

Click here to check out the latest Beef Buzz with Dr. Glenn Selk of OSU- talking Oklahoma Gold

One piece we have found on the internet with the help of Twitter comes from the site known as the Bovine Veterinarian- penned by their editor Geni Wren. She offers some fascinating observations of the Pacelle appearance and some of his statements.

Perhaps the observation made by Geni about the interview that sums up the dishonesty of HSUS the best is the following- "When asked why more HSUS funding doesn't go to support animal shelters, Pacelle says there are 10 billion animals raised for food in this country and only 7-8 million dogs/cats that go into shelters. Yet HSUS fundraising commercials and literature only focus on the dogs and cats to get people to open up their pocketbooks - perhaps if consumers knew their money was going to legislate how cows live, they'd think twice about their donation."
Click on the link below to see more of her comments in the aftermath of this fascinating interview that colleague Mike Adams had with Wayne Pacelle of the HSUS this week.

Click here for more reflections about the Pacelle interview from Geni Wren on her website Bovine Veterinarian.

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

Here are some links we will leave in place on an ongoing basis- Click on the name of the report to go to that link:
Our Daily Market Wrapup from the Radio Oklahoma Network with Ed Richards and Tom Leffler- analyzing the Futures Markets from the previous Day-
Ron on RON Markets as heard on K101 mornings with cash and futures reviewed- includes where the Cash Cattle market stands, the latest Feeder Cattle Markets Etc.
Previous Day's Wheat Market Recap- Two Pager From The Kansas City Board of Trade looks at all three US Wheat Futures Exchanges with extra info on Hard Red Winter Wheat and the why of that day's market.
Daily Oklahoma Cash Grain Prices- As Reported by the Oklahoma Dept. of Agriculture. <
The National Daily Feeder & Stocker Cattle Summary- as prepared by USDA.
The National Daily Slaughter Cattle Summary- as prepared by USDA.
Finally, Here is the Daily Volume and Price Summary from the Texas Cattle Feeders Association.