Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 15:20:04 CDT
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture are now putting the Daily Cash Grain Report into a PDF format – we are saving that PDF and archiving them for today’s specific report. To see today’s update, click on the PDF report link at the bottom of this story.
In addition to the PDF of the daily report, you can also listen to the Cash Grain Report by calling 405-621-5533. Push 2 for the grain report.
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 14:50:38 CDT
Today the Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) applauds the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for publishing reforms to the Seasonal Ag CDL program.
Reforms to the Farm-Related Restricted Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) program, more commonly known as the Seasonal Ag CDL program, go into effect immediately.
ARA Senior Vice President of Public Policy and Counsel Richard Gupton issued the following statement:
“This is a step in the right direction to ensure agricultural retailers are able to provide the level of service their farmer customers require at peak times in the growing and harvest season.
“One of the main reforms impacting ag retailers is the increase to the number of days that the restricted CDL is valid to 210 from 180 days. The second major reform is the change to a calendar year rotation for the program to prevent any overlaps from season to season from one year to the next.
“ARA commends its coalition partners along with Senators Jerry Moran and John Thune for their support and effort to get these critical provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. ARA is grateful FMCSA published the Congressionally mandated reforms to allow enough time for states to implement prior to the 2023 planting season.”
ARA and coalition partners sent letters to Congress in May and June of 2021 in support of modernizing this program.
States that allow for the Seasonal Ag CDL exemption will still need to make changes to their existing state rules. Learn more in the Asmark Institute’s report showing 24 states that offer the CDL.
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:20:29 CDT
Register today for the free Stockmanship & Stewardship virtual event to be held Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. This online version of the popular in-person event provides an opportunity for cattle producers to learn…
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:13:36 CDT
As Oklahoma continues to wait for rain, drought levels intensify in this week’s drought monitor. The statewide average rainfall total of 0.7 inches for Sept. 1-29 places it as the 5th driest September …
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:40:24 CDT
“Biologicals: Farmer Value, Perception and Potential,” a comprehensive market research effort focused on understanding farmer opinions on the current use, issues and potential for biologicals at …
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 13:17:35 CDT
In March of 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed the climate disclosure rule (The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors), which requires registrants to disclose information about direct greenhouse gas emissions, indirect greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity, or other forms of energy and those from upstream and downstream activities in its value chain.
Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is catching up with Congressman Frank Lucas talking about working on a piece of legislation, the Protect Farmers from the SEC Act, that could offer protection for farmers and ranchers when it comes to reporting individual farm or ranch greenhouse gas emission numbers to the Security and Exchange Commission.
The bill would prohibit the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring an issuer of securities to disclose greenhouse gas emissions from upstream and downstream activities in the issuer’s value chain arising from farms and ranches.
“I am in the process of filing to protect farmers from the SEC act,” Lucas said. “It is a bill to exclude agriculture from the Securities and Exchange Commission climate disclosure rulemaking process they are going through right now.”
The Biden administration and their SEC chairman, Gary Gensler are having trouble getting congress to pass the kind of laws they want, Lucas said, so they are wanting to use the rulemaking process to do it by fiat through the bureaucracy of the federal government.
Lucas is wanting to remove the SEC’s authority to make rules as it affects producers.
“The Securities and Exchange Commission, if they want to force people to do business a different way in this country, they can use these disclosure requirements at the SEC where typically businesses file papers to confirm that they are abiding by the Securities Exchange laws, they can use that then to force the change,” Lucas said.
This will be a domino effect and land on the farmer and rancher, Lucas said because a bakery or processing plant will hand the paperwork down to the feedlot or flour mill, who will then dump it onto the farmer or rancher.
“What the bill does is takes away the SEC’s authority to do this,” Lucas said. “Now, I am hopeful we will have great success in getting attention among my colleagues and whether we actually pass the proposal in the law, or we just simply get the Securities and Exchange Commission’s attention, and more directly leave us alone, the net result has to be the same.”
Lucas said farmers and ranchers do not need to feel the negative effects of somebody else’s environmental agenda.
“The two battle cries that you get from speaker Pelosi’s majority in the house and the White House is environmental justice and social justice,” Lucas said. “That says to me from a production agriculture perspective, they want to tell you how to farm. Their definition of environmental justice is denying you resources or making paperwork so complicated that you have to do it their way. And social justice is, they want to define who should farm in addition to how they should farm and that is not the way farm bills have worked since the 1930s, that is not the kind of system that has made our agriculture the most productive and efficient and safest in the world, so I am not going to allow- if I can help it- somebody sitting in an office in D.C., using paperwork to force my folks back home to farm a certain way and be a certain kind of farmer. That is just not right.”
At the very least, Lucas said by filing and gaining support across the country, he will hopefully get the attention of the SEC chairman and the bureaucracy.
“I don’t expect chairman Gensler to back off on anything,” Lucas said.
Because of this, there are a few different methods to make this legislation effective.
“The bottom line is, we can’t allow this to happen,” Lucas said. “The SEC is in a rulemaking process, so it has not taken effect yet, but we want to get ahead of this calamity before it occurs.”
Congressman Lucas was joined by more than 81 original cosponsors (including Oklahoma’s Tom Cole, Markwayne Mullin and Stephanie Bice), and is also supported by American Farm Bureau Federation, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Cotton Council, National Pork Producers Council, USA Rice, American Sugar Alliance, American Soybean Association, National Potato Council, United States Cattlemen’s Association, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, Agricultural Retailers Association, Oklahoma Farm Bureau, and the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association.
Specifically, the Protect Farmers from the SEC Act prohibits the SEC from requiring an issuer of securities to disclose greenhouse gas emissions from upstream and downstream activities in the issuer’s value chain arising from a farm, defines the production, manufacturing, or harvesting of an agricultural product through the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, outlines upstream and downstream activities, and defines greenhouse gases and removes the SEC’s exemptive authority in relation to this Act.
Click the LISTEN BAR below to listen to Ron Hays and Congressman Frank Lucas talking about protecting farmers and ranchers from SEC.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
Ron Hays Beef Buzzes with Congressman Frank Lucas on SEC Climate Disclosure Rulemaking
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:27:22 CDT
The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is pleased to announce that eight Research Ambassadors have been selected for 2022-2023 academic year:
Julian Cooper, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities …
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:20:33 CDT
The newly established Oklahoma Local Agriculture Collaborative invites you to attend their free educational packed workshops in Central Oklahoma. The workshops will take place on October 12th at The Well, 21…
Sep 29
Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:15:20 CDT
American Farmland Trust and the Natural Resource Conservation Service have signed a two-year, $2 million cooperative agreement to further develop and improve AFT’s soil health economic and environmental tools, including the Excel-based Retrospective Soil Health Economic Calculator (R-SHEC), the Excel-based Predictive Soil Health Economic Calculator (P-SHEC) and the Online-Soil Health Economic Calculator (O-SHEC). The tools will be improved with the most up-to-date soil health practice outcomes economics and environmental data and analysis and expanded to serve additional crops, and, eventually, additional soil health practices and production systems, such as grazing operations. AFT will create a Soil Health Economics Accelerator Team, expanding the existing team by hiring five new staff including economists and soil scientists.
With the understanding that regenerative farming and ranching practices help improve water resources, address the climate challenge and increase the resiliency of the U.S. agricultural system, practitioners from the NRCS, Soil & Water Conservation Districts, University Extension, NGOs, farm trade associations and corporate sustainability leaders find it urgent to expand their ability to assist clients by analyzing the economic return on investment of soil health practices like cover crops, no-till/reduced tillage, nutrient management, mulching, conservation cover and composting. Adoption rates for these practices are still relatively low. For example, as of 2017, cover crops had been adopted on only six percent of harvested annual cropland. A key barrier is farmers’ concern over their bottom line. Addressing these concerns with the best available data, rigorous analysis and credible insights will serve to scale up adoption more quickly.
“Since 2018, AFT has worked with the NRCS to develop the Soil Health Case Study Tool Kit, using it to demonstrate that the benefits of implementing agricultural soil health practices can outweigh the costs and over time, improve productivity and profitability in farming operations,” said Michelle Perez, AFT’s Water Initiative Director. “For the 13 ’soil health successful’ producers we’ve analyzed and featured in case studies so far, their adoption of soil health practices has led to a return on investment (ROI) between 7% and 343% for row crop farmers and 198% and 553% for the almond growers. We hope that expanding our suite of soil health economic and environmental tools will help bring economic benefits to more farmers and greater environmental benefits to society.”
This agreement comes at an opportune time. “AFT will leverage the power of the economic information made available by this team to accelerate the impact of multiple Climate Smart Commodity Projects that are also being awarded in the coming months,” noted Bianca Moebius-Clune, AFT’s Climate Initiative Director, “and vice versa we’ll be looking to leverage data from these expansive projects to further improve the capacity of the calculators to predict the economic value to producers of adopting soil health management systems.”
Specifically, the AFT and NRCS will work in partnership to improve the quantitative relationship between crop yield, soil organic matter and soil health practices in the predictive tool (P-SHEC), so the tool can project potential, future benefits to crop yield, soil fertility and available water holding capacity, key benefits to incentivize soil health practice adoption. AFT will release the P-SHEC Tool to the public for the first time after piloting the tool with “soil health curious” farmers. The retrospective tool (R-SHEC) will be improved to better incorporate diversification in crop rotations and expanded to include more crops and soil health practices. The R-SHEC Tool is used to develop the Soil Health Case Studies featuring “soil health successful” producers, 13 of which have been produced so far and are being used as outreach and educational materials to answer questions about the rate of return on investments in soil health. The online tool (O-SHEC), which is simpler and intended for direct use by farmers and their advisors, will be finalized, piloted and released to the public for the first time. This tool is key to accelerating farmer decision making, helping to evaluate costs and benefits of soil health practice adoption options more easily.
In addition to improving, piloting and releasing these tools, AFT and NRCS will expand the portfolio of soil health case studies to feature six to 12 new “soil health successful” farmers each year using the R-SHEC Tool. We will prioritize the location of these farmer case studies depending on conservation partner needs, identifying states where large environmental benefits could be realized from soil health practice adoption and to better serve historically underrepresented producer populations (e.g., Black, Indigenous, People of Color, women, veteran, next generation, other socially disadvantaged producers). Conservation partners who would like a case study featuring a “soil health successful” farmer in their project area, should contact Michelle Perez.
AFT is hiring now to build out the Soil Health Economics Accelerator Team, job postings are out now and new team members are expected to start November 7 or December 5, 2022 or earlier if suitable candidates are found sooner:
Economic Tools Development Manager / Senior Agricultural Economist – A senior level agricultural economist, who will conduct and lead research, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team across AFT, to further develop AFT’s three existing economic tools. This position will conduct literature research, acquire and analyze datasets, and develop innovative new ways to integrate existing scientific knowledge, data, and/or models to improve the tools’ relevance and utility for conservation professionals and producers. This position will report to the Water Initiative Director.
Economic Tools Development Agricultural Economist – Reporting to the Economic Tools Development Manager, this position will (1) conduct research and further develop AFT’s three existing economic tools and (2) serve as a reviewing economist for AFT’s soil health economic case studies.
Economic Tools Development Soil Health Scientist – Reporting to the Economic Tools Development Manager, this senior level position will provide leadership to further research and develop the tools, in collaboration with the existing interdisciplinary team. In addition, the person will lead research initiatives to investigate additional quantitative relationships between soil health practices, SOM and other soil health indicators with water quality, water quantity, climate and biodiversity indicators.
Two Soil Health Case Study Conservation Agronomists – These two identical positions will write at least three to six case studies each per year over two years featuring “soil health successful” producers and generate associated education and outreach materials for partners to use to help persuade “soil health curious” producers to adopt soil health practices. These people will also collaborate on the interdisciplinary team to further advance the soil health economic tools suite. Both people will report to AFT’s existing Agricultural Economics and Water Resources Manager who leads our production of case studies and is the lead developer of the R-SHEC Tool.
Sep 28
Wed, 28 Sep 2022 16:34:03 CDT
Below are statements from House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott, Subcommittee Chair Jahana Hayes and Congressman Jim McGovern following the conclusion of today’s White House Conference on Hu…
