Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. We are pleased 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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Dr. Edwards believes that while the wheat crop is not totally "made" at this point in mid May- there are few additional maangement tools that can be used to enhance the crop. He expects a crop somewhere close to what the crop scouts predicted in early May of around 130 to 140 million bushels of wheat to be harvested, unless we continue to get rains into June and it becomes a wet harvest season- then all bets are off.

Click on the link below to jump to our top story on our website on this Monday morning- and a chance to hear our full conversation with Dr. Edwards about the status of the 2010 Oklahoma winter wheat crop.

Click here for more on the soon to be harvested wheat crop- and a chance to hear our audio visit with Dr. Jeff Edwards.

Next up for the House Ag Committee road show is Texas Tech University and today's Field Hearing in Lubbock, Texas. The hearing begins at 9 AM central time- here's the witness list that does include past Presidents of the National Association of Wheat Growers- David Cleavinger and a past President of the National Corn Growers Association- Dee Vaughn.

Click on the link below to read more about the Saturday Field Hearing in Alabama and to see the full witness list for the Lubbock meeting today- all witnesses will be from Texas.

Click here for more on the House Ag Committee Road Trip that makes a stop today in Lubbock.

"This is tremendous news for U.S. pork producers," said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. "China is one of our biggest markets, so being able to ship pork there is extremely important to the U.S. pork industry. "Now that it can be sent to the Chinese market, we will focus on the remaining impediments to exporting U.S. pork to China," Carney said.
NPPC is continuing to urge the Obama administration to press China to address a number of other trade-related issues that limit U.S. pork imports. Among those issues are China's ban on U.S. pork produced with ractopamine - an FDA-approved feed ingredient that improves efficiency in pork production - subsidies China provides its domestic pork producers and a value-added tax it imposes on imports.

The U.S. pork industry exported nearly 400,000 metric tons of pork worth nearly $690 million to China/Hong Kong in 2008, making it the No. 3 destination for U.S. pork. Last year, U.S. pork exports to China/Hong Kong were down by 38 percent, falling to just under $427 million.

In October, at the conclusion of the annual U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting, China announced that it would rescind its pork import ban. Since then, NPPC worked closely with the Obama administration to pressure the Chinese to actually lift their ban and begin accepting U.S. pork imports.

The workshops, which were first announced by Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Aug. 5, 2009, are the first joint Department of Justice/USDA workshops ever to be held to discuss competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture industry. The goals of the workshops are to promote dialogue among interested parties and foster learning with respect to the appropriate legal and economic analyses of these issues, as well as to listen to and learn from parties with experience in the agriculture sector. Attendance at the workshops is free and open to the public.

After Federal and State officials offer their opening posturing statements, two panels will get to the heart of the matter as it relates to poultry contract growers and where the poultry industry is today on competitive issues.

The first panel will allow a dialogue among growers, former producers and government officials. Expected topics include competition in the poultry industry, poultry contracting, contract terminations and upgrades to poultry houses. The panel will also discuss inputs that affect grower compensation, such as bird quality, feed quality and consistency. This panel is all current and former growers, but includes no grower from west of the Mississippi.

The second panel, that will include Dr. Michael Dicks of OSU, will discuss changes in the structure of poultry production and enforcement under the Packers and Stockyards Act. Issues that will be discussed include the use of the tournament system and other methods of compensation, market access, contracting, credit availability, production efficiency/improvements and poultry house upgrades.

Click here for more information about this second of five Workshops planned by DOJ and USDA in 2010 on Competition Issues in Agriculture.

According to Tony Mata of the Beef Innovations Group, "The muscles of the round have the advantage that they are pretty good size, they are easy to train personnel for fabricating them, and the yield is pretty good. So, unlike for example the top blade which we had a challenge in convincing packers to fabricate it and sell it as the flat iron, and processors, and that item has a yield of 45-50 percent, and also you really have to have trained personnel to handle it. However, that's not the case with the muscles from the round. They're easier and higher yields."

We talk with Tony Mata of the Beef Innovations Group about this work with the Beef Round- and you can hear his thoughts about where these latest efforts may be taking us on today's Beef Buzz. Click on the link below to learn more.

Click here for more on the Muscle Profiling Efforts of the Beef Checkoff.

The training package includes topics such as low stress animal handling, handling injured or disabled animals; properly moving non-ambulatory animals; safe and responsible euthanasia, and safely working with gates. There is also a section for business owners and managers addressing the need for a coordinated animal handling or risk management program.

Dr. Dan Thomson, DVM, is director of the BCI and Jones Professor of Production Medicine. He said the program was the result of a "unique partnership" between LMA and the BCI, which produced "a novel training platform" for livestock market personnel.

LMA's member businesses "have understood the importance of animal well-being for a long time," he continued, "because nobody cares more about the animals than the people who work with them day to day." Market employees, Thomson said, "will now have online tools to learn the latest advances in best management practices for animal health and well-being."

Click here for the website that provides more information about the training being made available for a fee to Livestock Market Auctions.

This Resolution by Senators Murkowski (R-AK) and Lincoln (D-AR), would prevent the EPA from trumping Congress and unilaterally regulating greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act-a move that would be devastating to the U.S. economy in general, and agriculture in particular.
Despite a lack of verifiable science showing that GHGs are somehow the result of manmade activities, rather than a naturally-occurring phenomenon, the EPA has decided to move forward on its recent finding that GHGs are an "endangerment to public health and welfare." This finding provides the foundation for EPA to regulate GHGs from small and large sources throughout the economy-including farms, hospitals, office buildings and schools-under the CAA. The CAA is ill-equipped to address climate change, and it was never the intent of Congress that it be used for this purpose.

In their weekly Washington newsletter, NCBA goes on to say that "It would be irresponsible to allow the EPA to move forward on this type of regulation when there's so much uncertainty surrounding humans' contribution to climate change. S. J. Res. 26 would in effect reverse EPA's finding, and instead allow the complex issue of climate change to be handled through thoughtful Congressional debate. In these challenging economic times, we cannot afford to take actions that further jeopardize the ability of the U.S. to remain competitive in the global marketplace."

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

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.