From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.ccsend.com] on behalf of Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 7:28 AM
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 Friday May 8, 2009
A service of Johnston Enterprises, American Farmers & Ranchers and Midwest Farm Shows!
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-- Kansas Crop Scouts Predict 333.3 Million Bushel Wheat Crop for 2009
-- Obama Budget in Regards to Agriculture- Same Cuts as Proposed Back in February
-- CRP in Oklahoma- Decision Time for 159,850 Acres This September
-- Worries About Making Animal ID Mandatory
-- Oklahoma Grabs Top Three Team Slots in National FFA Range Judging
-- AFBF Not Happy with US-EU Beef Agreement
-- Saturday Morning on the Tube
-- Looking at our Agricultural Markets...

Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. We are proud 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!

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Kansas Crop Scouts Predict 333.3 Million Bushel Wheat Crop for 2009
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The end of the Kansas Wheat Crop tour saw crop scouts come in with a wheat crop prediction very much subject tot he whims of Mother Nature. The head of the Wheat Quality Council, Ben Handcock, told reporters after the final session that he has concerns about the wheat crop in Kansas- and that it could either be a good bit smaller or larger, depending on how weather plays out the balance of May into early June. Handcock still anticipates an "average" crop for Kansas here in 2009.

Mike Schulte of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission seems to agree, saying that "we saw good wheat but I felt that the stands we saw were much thinner than in previous years- lack of moisture and freeze damage in Central Kansas will also have an impact."

Estimates by the Crop Scouts peg the average yield at 40.8 bushels per acre- that would mean they expect about 8.3 million acres to be harvested this season. The 333.3 million bushel level is 12% under the prediction made by the Tour one year ago- less than the 356 million bushels that Kansas actually produced last year and under their ten year average of 348.4 million bushels.

Click here for more on the Kansas Wheat Crop Tour with comments from Mike Schulte of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission


Obama Budget in Regards to Agriculture- Same Cuts as Proposed Back in February
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President Obama sent Congress a detailed federal budget Thursday that cuts or kills 13 agriculture programs. The ag cuts would amount to nearly 16.4-billion-dollars - and include most of the same trims the President put in the bare-bones budget outline he submitted in February. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag briefed reporters and called these cuts needed and overdue.

Obama proposed ending 570-million dollars in cotton storage payments to producers; reducing crop insurance subsidies to farmers and insurers by about 5.2-billion; saving 126-million by capping farm program payments at 250-thousand-dollars per person; and eliminating all federal support for the Resource Conservation and Development Program. In addition, phasing out direct payments to farmers with sales exceeding 500-thousand-dollars a year, saving 9.7-billion, has already been rejected by Congress.

Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas, the ranking Minority member of the House Ag Committee, blasted the details of the Obama budget for rural America as he issued the following statement: "It is not enough for President Obama to promote a cap and tax program that would just hammer rural America with a higher cost of living, now he's revealed the details of a budget that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of agriculture economics and disregards the promises made in the 2008 Farm Bill, which has not even been fully implemented. The worst example of his budget proposal is eliminating $9 billion in direct payments for those who have more than $500,000 in annual sales, not profits. It's the wrong policy track and it will only hurt our family-run farms all across rural America."

Click on our link below for more on the Obama budget plan as it relates to agriculture- and this includes some audio comments from Peter Orszag, the White House Budget Director.

Click here for more on the Obama FY2010 Ag budget proposals


CRP in Oklahoma- Decision Time for 159,850 Acres This September
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Ag Program Specialist Rod Wanger of the Oklahoma office of the Farm Service Agency has provided us with some insight on the number of acres in Oklahoma that may be coming out of CRP this fall. It may well approach 100,000 acres when it is all said and done. That's assuming that some of the acres that are being declared eligible for extension may not be reenrolled and that most if not all of the acres that USDA says they don't want in a new full fledged CRP contract return to being farmed.

Rod writes us in an email "Oklahoma was looking at 159,580 acres to expire on September 30, 2009. Through the authorized extension participants on 69,828 acres will be offered an opportunity to extend their CRP contract for an offered three or five year period. CRP participants being offered an extension should be receiving a letter from FSA approximately May 18, 2009. The CRP participant will have until June 30, 2009, to elect the extension offer on all or a portion of the applicable contract acres but no new acres can be added to the contract.

"CRP participants on the 89,752 acres that will not receive an extension notice will receive a letter approximately May 11, 2009, that their CRP acreage is set to expire on September 30, 2009. The letter will list some options the participants may have with the expiring acreage which is essentially the opportunity to enroll eligible acres in a continuous CRP contract or to utilize for haying, grazing, or cropping after September 30, 2009. The base acres associated with the CRP will be released after September 30, 2009 for the producer to enroll in the DCP/ACRE program."

Click here for the earlier news release on the CRP extension plan by USDA


Worries About Making Animal ID Mandatory
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Last month, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack hosted a meeting with 28 livestock and producer groups as they talked about the pros and cons of Mandatory Animal ID. Included in that meeting was the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. We hear today on our Beef Buzz from Colin Woodall of their Washington office about the concerns that the cattle organization has with a mandatory approach to Animal ID.

Woodall says the cattle group has several worries. NCBA members are particularly concerned about the protection of producers' confidential information, which would be housed in a USDA-maintained database. The federal government has not demonstrated a strong track-record when it comes to preventing the leak of private information, and USDA has not been able to guarantee that the information in a mandatory system would be protected from release under a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request. USDA's own Office of General Counsel has indicated that protection is different between a voluntary and mandatory system.

You can read more about their concerns and hear comments from Colin Woodall on our Friday Beef Buzz- as heard on great radio stations across the state on the Radio Oklahoma Network. We note only have today's show on our website- but also a great archive of previous shows for you to review as well. Check them out.

Click here for Friday's Beef Buzz with Colin Woodall of the NCBA


Oklahoma Grabs Top Three Team Slots in National FFA Range Judging
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The 58th annual National Land and Range Judging Contest was held yesterday at the USDA ARS Ft. Reno station in Canadian County- and Oklahoma FFA teams dominated the Range Judging portion of the contest. The Roland FFA Chapter took first, Ok Union was second and Sequoyah FFA placed third in the national contest. Brownwood FFA of Texas was fourth and Aurora FFA of Missouri rounded out the top five of this division.

The top 4-H club in Range Judging was from South Dakota, the Haakon-Jackson team. Land Judging was won by West Virginia squads in both 4-H and FFA- Barbour County 4-H and Taylor County FFA. In the Homesite evaluation contest, Barbour County 4-H of West Virginia also was the national team winner while Southeast Manatee FFA of Florida took the top prize.

The highest finish by an individual from Oklahoma came in the FFA Range Judging, with Tanner Vaughn of Ok Union winning the high individual nationally in that competition beating out second place Braydon Besselaar of Jacksboro FFA in Texas and third place Colby Williamson of the Roland, Ok FFA Chapter.
The Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts and a whole host of groups support this annual contest that brings in close to a thousand folks from 35 or more states annually to central Oklahoma.

Click here for the full rundown of all the winners from yesterday at the National Land and Range Judging Contest


AFBF Not Happy with US-EU Beef Agreement
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American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman says Farm Bureau is - disappointed that the provisional agreement announced Wednesday between the United States and the European Union in the beef hormone dispute did not fully open the EU market to U.S. beef. He pointed out that - unfortunately, the provisional agreement continues to allow the EU to maintain its restrictions on U.S. beef imports in a manner inconsistent with science-based decision making and world trade rules.

While the agreement provides new duty-free access for hormone-free beef, Stallman says, - it is long past time for the EU to abide by the rules and dispute settlement decisions of the World Trade Organization.

While Farm Bureau appreciates the efforts of the Office of the United States Trade Representative to expand beef marketing opportunities, Stallman emphasized, - we strongly support efforts to require our trading partners to comply with international standards and fully open their markets to U.S. beef.

While AFBF is not pleased with this deal- NCBA's Gregg Doud told us earlier that it offers opportunity to sell beef into the EU- click here for Thursday's report on that point of view


Saturday Morning on the Tube
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This Saturday, we are scheduled to have Roy Lee Lindsey of the Oklahoma Pork Council joining us as we talk about the huge losses faced by the pork industry in the aftermath of the flu outbreak that was called mistakenly swine flu. It had nothing to do with hogs- but that blunder cost US hog producers as much as $20 per animal since April 25. Market economist Chris Hurt of Purdue says he is estimating that as many as one third of the US hog producers could go out of business because of this latest economic blow.
We will talk about all of this with Roy Lee on our segment on Saturday morning called In the Field with Ron Hays on KWTV News9 around 6:40 AM.

Clinton Griffiths also dropped us an email on the program lineup for SUNUP for Saturday morning- this is the show produced by OSU Ag Communications and seen on OETA across the state.
Clinton says that SUNUP will go on a musk thistle weevil round-up in Jet, Oklahoma. We show landowners how to use the weevil to fight back against the invasive thistles
SUNUP covers the groundbreaking of the OSU Institute for Agricultural Biosciences in Ardmore
Glenn Selk talks about deworming calves in Cow-calf corner
In Shop Stop the guys give viewers a tip on how to limp a trailer home after blowing a tire
Derrell Peel discusses the impact the current global flu outbreak is having on pork and other meat markets
and they finish their series on the 2008 Farm Bill

Later today, we will have audio with Roy Lee Lindsey after we do our TV segment with him- as we talk about the impact on the Oklahoma Pork Industry- go to our main page and look under the section in the middle of the page called Top Agricultural News.

Click here for our home page of OklahomaFarmReport.Com


Our thanks to Midwest Farm Shows, American Farmers & Ranchers and Johnston Enterprises for their support of our daily Farm News Update. For your convenience, we have our sponsors' websites linked at the top of the email- check them out and let these folks know you appreciate the support of this daily email, as their sponsorship helps us keep this arriving in your inbox on a regular basis!

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


Looking at our Agricultural Markets...
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Lower money for cash cattle in feedlot country- the Texas Cattle Feeders are reporting over 36,000 head were sold on Thursday at $84 in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico feedlots- off by around two dollars from the limited trade a week ago. We have a link to details of this at the bottom of our market links below.

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.



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