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Success Stories Told About Water Quality Improvement During Oklahoma Conservation Day at the Capitol

 

There were another seven "success stories" told on Wednesday during the 2016 Conservation Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol. The Oklahoma Conservation Commission, along with the Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts reported that the Commission plans to take data to EPA this summer to delist seven streams in the state that they say have been cleaned up from a variety of water quality problems.

The streams that Oklahoma says they will supply EPA with data on this summer in hopes of getting them delisted from the EPA Impaired Stream list include:

Canadian Sandy Creek, Pontotoc and Garvin Counties

Caney Boggy Creek, Hughes, Coal, and Pittsburg Counties

Delaware Creek, Osage and Tulsa Counties

Upper Honey Creek, Delaware County

Main Creek, Major County

Otter Creek, Kiowa and Tillman Counties

Stillwater Creek, Payne County

We talked about these efforts with Shannon Phillips of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission- click here for our story that includes our conversation with her.

AFBF Spring Picnic Marketbasket Survey Shows Slight Price Decrease

 
Lower retail prices for several foods, including salad, orange juice, shredded cheddar, ground chuck, sirloin tip roast, vegetable oil, white bread, ground chuck, deli ham and orange juice, resulted in a slight decrease in the American Farm Bureau Federation's Spring Picnic Marketbasket Survey.



The informal survey shows the total cost of 16 food items that can be used to prepare one or more meals was $53.28, down $.59 or about 1% compared to a survey conducted a year ago. Of the 16 items surveyed, ten decreased and six increased in average price.


Items showing retail price decreases from a year ago included:

-Bagged salad, down 11% to $2.20 per pound

-Orange juice, down 8% to $3.21 per half-gallon

-Shredded cheddar cheese, down 7% to $4.29 per pound

-Whole milk, down 6% to $3.23 per gallon

-Ground chuck, down 5% to $4.36 per pound

-Vegetable oil, down 5% to $2.55 for a 32-ounce bottle

-White bread, down 3% to $1.69 per 20-ounce loaf

-Flour, down 1% to $2.49 for a 5-pound bag

-Sirloin tip roast, down 1% to $5.65 per pound

-Potatoes, down 1% to $2.71 for a 5-pound bag

Read more- including which foods were higher this year versus last- the full story is available here.

Cover Crop/No Till Guru Gabe Brown in Oklahoma Next Week to Tout Soil Health

 
For those of you that have attended No Till on the Plains or other national No TIll Conferences- you may have heard Gabe Brown speak. Well, for the rest of you- your chance is coming next week when the North Dakota rancher/farmer will be one of the keynoters at two Soil Health events planned for Alva on Wednesday and El Reno on Thursday.

Fifteen years ago Gabe Brown's soil organic matter was under two percent, today it is over six percent. He has accomplished this with cover crops and grazing. Last year his corn crop was better than his home county average and all he purchased was seed. At six per cent organic matter, his soil provided all the nutrients and water he needed

Brown and NRCS Soil Health Guru Ray Archuleta share top billing for these two meetings, being presented by the Oklahoma Land Stewardship Alliance, NRCS and OSU Extension.

OSU's Jason Warren is also an important part of the program- as he has the latest on the ongoing cover crop research from Lahoma at the OSU Research Station.

The Alva Meeting on March 30 is at NW Technology Center located at 1801 S. 11th Street while the El Reno meeting is at Redlands Community Conference Center located at 1300 S. Country Club Road.

Contact Kim Barker for more info- his number is 580-732-0244.

More details about both conferences are available here.

 

NPPC To USDA: Defend 'Other White Meat' Sale

 
In a meeting on Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of General Counsel, representatives of the National Pork Producers Council demanded that the agency defend the purchase by the National Pork Board from NPPC of the Pork. The Other White Meat trademarked assets.


NPPC sold to the Pork Board in 2006 The Other White Meat® slogan and pork chop logo for about $35 million. NPPC financed the purchase over 20 years, making the Pork Board's annual payment $3 million. The sale was an arms-length transaction with a lengthy negotiation in which both parties were represented by legal counsel, and USDA, which oversees the federal Pork Checkoff program administered by the Pork Board, approved the purchase.

The Humane Society of the United States, a lone Iowa farmer and the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement in 2012 filed a lawsuit against USDA, seeking to have the sale rescinded. Initially, USDA defended the lawsuit, and a U.S. District Court dismissed it for lack of standing, but a federal appeals court in August 2015 reinstated the suit. But before any court proceedings on the merits of the suit, USDA inexplicably changed course and entered into settlement talks with HSUS.


According to NPPC President John Weber, a pork producer from Dysart, Iowa, and CEO Neil Dierks, who met with USDA's general counsel and reiterated the pork industry's objection to any settlement, there was no indication where the agency stands on the case. "We're concerned that even though USDA has a very strong legal position, it isn't defending a contract it approved," said Weber. "We're concerned that it already has thrown in the towel."

More of NPPC's concerns about the dealings between USDA and HSUS are available here.

Understanding Consumers Helps Cattle Producers React to Trends in Food Business

 
Everyday- consumers' eating behaviors are evolving and those behaviors create trends that the food business has to consider and respond to. This was a topic that was covered by the founder and CEO of Encore Food Solutions, Paul Heinrich, at the 2016 Cattlemen's Day hosted recently by Kansas State University.


One example of a food trend that is not based on science, but sounds "back to nature" is how good of a product is grass fed beef. Heinrich says that consumer beliefs about grass fed beef are often off base from reality.   


The food industry consultant says that cattle producers should make the effort to keep up with the current thinking of today's consumers, especially younger adults- as he believes that knowing, and then responding to what consumers are thinking is how cattlemen and cattlewomen educating should address current trends.

Paul Heinrich is our guest on the Beef Buzz- read more and listen to his thoughts about staying up with what is driving consumers these days by clicking here.

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Land Grants in the Region to Study Ag Sustainability in the Eight States that Sit on Top of the Ogallala Aquifer

 
For more than 80 years, the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest freshwater aquifer in the world, has been the main source of agricultural and public water for the Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma, western Kansas and parts of five other states in the Great Plains.


Now, researchers from the leading land grant schools in the region will play an important role within a U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture-funded university consortium to address agricultural sustainability on the aquifer. More than 90 percent of the water pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer is used for irrigated agriculture.


The consortium, led by Colorado State University and includes Oklahoma State University, Kansas State University and five other universities as well as USDA's Agricultural Research Service, has been awarded a USDA Water for Agriculture Challenge Area Coordinated Agriculture Project grant that will provide $10 million over four years for innovative research and extension activities to address water challenges in the Ogallala Aquifer region.

Click here to read more about these research efforts to help maintain the viability of high plains agriculture in the Ogallala region.

This N That- Superior Livestock Offering 27,300 Head Tomorrow and One Man's Worries About Buying Organic 

 
Every other Friday, the folks at Superior Livestock hold their regular Feeder Cattle online auction- and they have over 27,000 ready to sell tomorrow, starting at 8:00 AM central.

Included in the totals this week:

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