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We
invite you to listen to us on great radio stations
across the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network
weekdays- if you missed this morning's Farm News - or
you are in an area where you can't hear it- click
here for this morning's Farm news
from Ron Hays on RON.
Let's Check the
Markets!
Today's
First Look:
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.
Okla
Cash Grain:
Daily
Oklahoma Cash Grain Prices- as reported
by the Oklahoma Dept. of Agriculture.
Canola
Prices:
Current
cash price for Canola is $12.61 per bushel at the Northern
Ag elevator in Yukon-
2012
New Crop contracts for Canola are now available at
$12.61 per bushel- delivered to local
participating elevators that are working with PCOM.
Futures
Wrap:
Our
Daily Market Wrapup from the Radio
Oklahoma Network with Ed Richards and Tom Leffler-
analyzing the Futures Markets from the previous Day.
KCBT
Recap:
Previous Day's Wheat Market Recap-
Two Pager from the Kansas City Board of Trade looks
at all three U.S. Wheat Futures Exchanges with extra
info on Hard Red Winter Wheat and the why of that day's
market.
Feeder
Cattle Recap:
The
National Daily Feeder & Stocker
Cattle Summary- as prepared by USDA.
Slaughter
Cattle Recap:
The
National Daily Slaughter Cattle
Summary- as prepared by the USDA.
TCFA
Feedlot Recap:
Finally,
here is the Daily Volume and Price Summary from
the Texas Cattle Feeders Association.
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Oklahoma's
Latest Farm and Ranch News
Your
Update from Ron Hays of RON
Tuesday,
May 8,
2012 |
Howdy
Neighbors!
Here is your daily Oklahoma farm and ranch
news update.
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Featured
Story:
Voluntary
Conservation Efforts Produce Water Quality Success
Stories Across the
State
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.
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Sponsor
Spotlight
We
are excited to have as one of our sponsors for the
daily email Producers Cooperative Oil Mill,
with 64 years of progress through producer
ownership. Call Brandon Winters at 405-232-7555
for more information on the oilseed crops they
handle, including sunflowers and canola- and
remember they post closing market prices for
canola and sunflowers on the PCOM website- go there by
clicking here.
And we are proud to
have P & K Equipment/ P & K
Wind Energy as one of our regular
sponsors of our daily email update. P & K is
the premiere John Deere dealer in Oklahoma, with
ten locations to serve you, and the P & K team
are excited about their Wind Power program, as
they offer Endurance Wind Power wind
turbines. Click here for the P&K website-
to learn about the location nearest you and the
many products they offer the farm and ranch
community. |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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God Bless!
You can reach us at the following:
phone: 405-473-6144
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