Featured Story:

Voluntary conservation efforts by Oklahoma landowners in partnership with state and federal conservation programs are paying off. In a news conference Monday, Oklahoma conservation officials announce 11 streams will be added to the EPA's Non-Point Source Success Stories.

Shanon Phillips, director of the Water Quality Division of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission commended landowners working with state and federal officials with the success. 

She said conservationists were able to analyze the data and determine that the improvement in water quality was due to participation in voluntary conservation programs the NRCS and the state conservation districts put into place.

Phillips cited the example of Pennington Creek as one of the streams that was at one time endangered and has now been given a clean bill of health.

"Pennington Creek is a jewel of southeastern Oklahoma. It's in the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer area. It's a crystal clear stream that, if you looked at it, you could never imagine it had any water quality problems. However, it did have high concentrations of a type of fecal bacteria which can cause people to get sick if they accidentally swallow the water.

"Over time, the USDA and state conservation districts put practices in place that would reduce that bacteria in the water. And we saw that between 2002 and 2010 those concentrations decreased by more than half. That came to a level it was no longer considered impaired and, again, it's maintaining that low level when we looked at it again in 2012. So, through those voluntary practices we've made that creek completely safe for swimming and fishing and also for the aquatic life that lives there and relies on it."

You can read more about these conservation success stories and hear our full interview with Shanon Phillips by clicking here.

With Harvest Getting Underway, Crop Conditions Look Good 

There were a few reports of wheat and canola being harvested over the weekend in southwestern Oklahoma and conditions continued to be rated mostly good for all small grains. The extent of the damage to wheat from hail and high winds the past few weeks will be seen as the crop is harvested over the next month.

Fifty-six percent of Oklahoma's wheat crop was in good shape, 20 percent was listed as excellent, 20 percent was I fair condition and only four percent was reported to be in poor or very poor condition. Sixty percent of the crop was at the soft dough stage, 41 points ahead of the five-year average.

Canola posted similar numbers with 54 percent in good condition, 21 percent excellent, 22 percent reported in fair condition and only three percent in poor or very poor shape.

Forty-seven percent of the wheat crop in Kansas was reported in good condition, 29 percent is in fair shape, 13 percent is excellent and 11 percent is poor or very poor.

Texas reports 37 percent of its wheat crop is in poor or very poor condition, 29 percent is in fair shape, 27 percent is listed in good condition and seven percent is excellent.

You can read the USDA's weekly crop condition and progress report by clicking here. 

Beef Industry Supporters Take Action to Combat LFTB Misinformation

Refusing to cede the high ground to the media feeding frenzy which recently torpedoed the Lean Finely Textured Beef market, beef industry heavyweights have renewed their efforts to inform the public about the benefits of the product and the pitfalls of allowing ourselves to be stampeded away from buying a product which is healthy and economical.

Cargill Beef has taken the unusual step of promoting its Finely Textured Beef on the NASCAR circuit. The company recently debuted a new paint scheme for the Number 6 car driven by Ricky Stenhouse. The company will sponsor 15 races this year. You can read more about the racing efforts and find the full race schedule by clicking here. 

Writing for the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, H. Russell Cross from Texas A&M University exhorts the beef industry to take a more pro-active role in educating the public or face future public relations disasters of even larger proportions. The beef industry has no shortage of detractors who will be emboldened to use misinformation to further their agendas. Click here to read more of Cross's commentary.

The Iowa State University Department of Economics has employed Checkoff dollars to study the economic impacts of the fallout from the media's slanted coverage of LFTB. Dermot Hays and Daniel Otto of Texas A& M say nearly 3,000 jobs have been lost or are in jeopardy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in multiplied sales and tax revenues have been lost they say. For more on their findings, click here.

Peel Examines Cattle Markets Clouded by Uncertainty

A number of factors have impacted cattle markets recently, and Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University's Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist, sorts through them in his analysis appearing in this week's Cow/Calf Newsletter:

Cattle markets have displayed a noticeable lack of direction lately, marked by a weak or stagnant undertone despite generally strong fundamentals. Much of this tone is due to external factors and seems more the result of uncertainty about possible negative outcomes or uncertainty about the impact of negative outcomes than to the direct impact of decidedly negative situations.

Not all the factors are external. The beef industry has had plenty of negative news in the past month with concerns over lean finely textured beef (LFTB) and the fourth case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The worst of the direct impacts of LFTB is past but lingering effects will likely impact markets for several more weeks. The beef trimmings market, where prices briefly dropped by half, has recovered much of the lost value. On the other hand, the BSE case had almost no impact on cash markets with the negative impacts confined largely to rumor-based futures trading ahead of the official USDA announcement of the case. Most of the drop in Live and Feeder futures was recovered within a few days. Though U.S. beef exports have been largely unaffected, the situation created a breath-holding situation that has hampered markets the past two weeks. 

To read more of Derrell Peel's analysis, please click here.

OSU Quail Symposium to Address Declining Quail Populations

For anyone who has an interest in Northern bobwhite quail and their declining populations across Oklahoma and the United States, the mini-symposium on Northern Bobwhites is the place to be.

The symposium will be held in conjunction with the Annual Advisory Board Meeting of the Bollenbach Chair in Wildlife Ecology at the Wes Watkins Center May 23 from 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. The Watkins Center is at the intersection of Hall of Fame Avenue and Washington Street in Stillwater.

Free and open to the public, the meeting features a star-studded lineup of experts in the field discussing various topics related to the birds.

"The meeting should be of interest to hunters and conservationists concerned about declining populations of Northern bobwhites," said Fred Guthery, professor and Bollenback Endowed Chair in Wildlife Ecology in Oklahoma State University's Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management. "Likewise, the papers will be germane to university faculty involved with natural resources, ecology and zoology." 

Click here for more on the Quail Symposium.

Locavore's Dilemma: A Different Look at the Local Food Movement

The recent push for producing and eating more food grown and sold locally has been popularized by everyone from the local farmer's market promoter, to Michelle Obama, to the USDA. All sorts of claims are made for the benefits of locally-grown organic produce. But, are those claims true? Is locally grown food more sustainable, healthier, and better for the environment?

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and an environmental economist, takes a look at a new book exploring the topic in the following opinion piece:

A Canadian couple of my acquaintance has just published a book provocatively titled The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000 Mile Diet. A new review in Publisher's Weekly calls it a "daring, bare-knuckled, frequently sarcastic defense of the status quo in Western industrial agribusiness. From the point of view of the well-off, well-fed North American who does not have to toil much of the day for his subsistence, what's not to praise in the West's ability to provide the world with cheap, fast, uniform, reliable, bug-resistant, vitamin-enhanced food?"

Publisher's Weekly correctly points out that high-yield farming has abolished famine on "our side of the world." Modern transportation, they note, also allows us to consume all kinds of out-of-season foods.

Read more about the Locavore's Dilemma and the 10,000-Mile Diet by clicking here.

This N That- WheatWatch Pics, BPI Plants Go Dark Forever and Senate Ag Committee Has Handy Dandy Farm Bill Guide 

We have posted a few more pictures in our Flickr set of photos showing the 2012 wheat crop from shortly after planting to thepoint now of being ready for harvest. Our WheatWatch 2012 has been a service of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, as they continue to work hard for Oklahoma Wheat producers. Click here for the Flickr set and scroll down to the most recent pictures added to the set for those we took at the end of last week at the OSU Lahoma Field Station as we were there for the Canola Field Day.  For the most part, the wheat there and south to Hennessey and down US 81 to Okarche looked great and was clearly beginning to turn color and get ready for the combines to do their work.

A sad day for more than 600 families yesterday as word came that the shutdown by Beef Products Inc of three of their four plants that processed beef mechanically removed from the bones of beef carcasses and transformed into Lean Finely Textured Beef will be permanently shuttered. The plants to be closed- in Waterloo, Iowa; Garden City, Kans.; and Amarillo, Texas, due to consumer aversion to lean finely textured beef (LFTB), labeled "pink slime" in media reports. The South Sioux City, Neb., plant is expected to remain open at a reduced capacity. You can read more in the on line publication, Agri-Pulse- click here for details of this tragic end to the slime campaign waged by a major TV network and one of its reporters.  BPI stated that it continues "to stand by our lean beef as 100% wholesome, safe and nutritious," and defend "against the mischaracterizations and irresponsible misrepresentations that led us to take these actions."  

The Senate Ag Committee wasted little time in passing their version of the so called "Farm Bill" for 2012 a couple of weeks ago.  The Senate bill, called the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act reforms, eliminates and streamlines numerous programs, saving taxpayers $23 billion, according to the Senate Ag Committee Farm Bill webpage. They add that " It does this while strengthening the tools available to producers to help manage risks and conserve natural resources."  The Committee has released a 17 page quick and dirty look at what their bill contains- and you can click here to read it as we now wait on either Senate floor action or House Ag Committee movement in getting policy passed.