Agriculture News

Some Perspective on the USDA's August 1 Corn and Soybean Yield Projections

The August 1 U.S. average corn and soybean yield projections, at 175.1 and 48.9bpa, respectively, were record large and a major surprise to the market. While these are indeed "big" yields in an absolute sense, it is an open question whether these are truly "monster" yields. We provide some perspective on that issue in today's article. For corn, this comparison shows that the August 1 yield projection is 10.9 bushels above trend, but it would only be the 8th highest deviation since 1960. While this would certainly be a very good corn yield by historical standards, it would not even be among the top 5 largest positive trend deviations. For perspective, the highest trend deviation of 18 bushels in 2004 would translate into a yield of 182.2 bushels in 2016. In contrast, the August 1 trend deviation for soybeans would be 3.9 bushels per acre and the second highest on record. It is especially interesting to observe that if the August 1 USDA soybean yield verifies then three of the five highest positive trend deviations for soybeans since 1960 will have occurred in the last three years. Either we have had an extraordinary run of favorable weather for U.S. soybean production in the last three years or soybean technology and management have made a discrete jump, or both.

Ag’s major needs are water and workers

The major concerns for California agriculture as an industry are water and workers. Most everybody seems to understand that.  Phil Martin in the department of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Davis has clarified the issues and written a report that appears in the current issue of Update, his department’s bi-monthly newsletter. He forecasts warmer winters ahead as an important issue in the supply of water to irrigate crops. With added tree crops expected to be part of the California landscape he sees what he calls a hardening of demand for available water It is defined by the need to irrigate trees for 20 or 30 years, while land where forage and field crops are grown might be fallowed when water supplies are tight. The third major influence he sees is intensified water marketing, movement of irrigation water around the state.   Professor Martin’s report includes an assessment of farm worker availability and the forces that influence it. He notes that the number of hired agricultural workers rose 12 percent over the last decade to reach 415,000 in 2014. But it took 829,000 “unique” workers to fill those jobs because of seasonality and turnover.

Animal ag publications need not be the ag industry’s own worst enemy

Sometimes ag publications are the industry’s worst enemy. Bloomberg News published an article August 5, 2016, about vaccines becoming a bigger player in animal health, helping to lower the use of antibiotics used in animals raised for food. Beef Producer copied it word for word in its August 9, 2016, edition. It does not exactly state the truth, and implies that deaths from antibiotic resistant bacteria stem from animal ag use of the products. Some quotes follow from the article. “Farm animals are fed about 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. which make their way into the human body.”  What makes its way into my body, the animals or the antibiotics? 82 percent of the antibiotics fed to animals are never or very rarely are used in human medicine. In fact, tetracyclines are the only antibiotics used in human medicine that are represented in the 82 percent number.  The sales of tetracyclines in human health comprise only 3 percent of all sales in human medicine and certainly are not big guns in the fight against the super-bugs.  The 82 percent number also represents sales for companion animals like horses, cats and dogs, as footnoted on every graph and table on the FDA’s annual sales reports...... Your antagonists can sit back, smile and take the week off. Your publications are doing their work for them.

Cow belches help drive California dairy industry lobbying blitz

Cow dung and cow stomach gas: not just smelly, but also politically loaded.

Hence a new California dairy industry campaign pushing back on California’s recommendation to regulate a naturally occurring source of methane. Part of the state’s plan to curb climate-altering methane involves getting food waste out of landfills, where it releases gas as it decomposes. The California Air Resources Board has also suggested slashing methane from cow manure and from a source of about half of the emissions from California’s 5.5 million beef and dairy cows: something called “enteric fermentation.”