Congressman Frank Lucas Says Lawmakers Must Ensure 'There's Still "Farm" in the Farm Bill' 

With a series of field hearings on the new farm bill halfway over, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas says his he has heard recurrent themes from producers all across the country. Crafting a bill embodying those themes won't be that difficult, he says, but crafting a bill that will pass muster in both houses of Congress is another story.

Chairman Lucas said there are a number of factors working in favor of the authors of the House Bill. Those factors include a near unanimity of producers on the main issues to be addressed by the bill, and the Senate's failure to pass a budget. The difficulties come, he says, from those who hold differing views on the underlying purpose of a farm bill.

"If we're going to have a farm bill it has to have two fundamental principles: It has to have 'farm' still in the Farm Bill. And with 75-nearly 80 percent of present farm bill spending in the existing farm bill in nutrition programs, you have to be very careful to make sure there's still farm in the farm bill. The other component, of course, is a farm bill that will work with, work for, will enable people in all commodity groups and across the country to participate in it. Once again, it's not a farm bill if farmers and ranchers can't participate in the whole country."

Lucas says crafting a bill with sufficient flexibility is certainly possible and, judging from what he's heard during field hearings across the country, what farmers and ranchers want even more is for the federal government to simply just get out of the way.

You can read more of this story as well as hear the full interview with Chairman Lucas by clicking here.

Wheat Watch 2012- A Wheat Crop Update with State Wheat Specialist Dr. Jeff Edwards  

The 2012 Oklahoma Wheat Crop is looking in good to excellent shape across many of the wheat fields of the state as we wind down the month of March. On Wednesday, we caught up with Dr. Jeff Edwards, Oklahoma's state wheat specialist, and talked about the crop as it now stands. Edwards tells Hays that the north central part of the state is where you find the crop well ahead of normal development and in lush condition. Central Oklahoma also looks very good. The southwestern counties were able to get significant rainfall over the last couple of weeks that was extremely timely and allows the crop in that part of the state to continue to develop in generally good shape. The concern in southwest Oklahoma is the limited amount of moisture in the soil profile- decent amounts in the topsoil and limited moisture when you get down to the subsoil layers. 

Edwards is very concerned about northwestern Oklahoma and the Panhandle, which must get more rain several more times to be able to make a decent wheat crop.  

We talked weeds, insect pressure and disease potential as well with Dr. Edwards.  You can see the video of our conversation with Jeff Edwards by clicking here- there is also an audio only segment talking about fungicides and the decisions that need to be made IMMEDIATELY to get ahead of any possible rust problems.   

Chairwoman Stabenow's and Ranking Member Roberts' Resolution Opposing MF Global Executive Bonuses Passes

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Senator Pat Roberts, the Committee's Ranking Member, introduced and passed a bipartisan resolution opposing bonuses for MF Global executives with unanimous support in the Senate. According to news reports, Louis Freeh, the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of MF Global Holding Ltd, may submit a plan in the coming weeks asking a bankruptcy judge to pay bonuses to top MF Global executives-even though the company is now bankrupt and thousands of its customers' money is still missing. MF Global's bankruptcy last year, the eighth largest in U.S. history, resulted in a loss of as much as $1.6 billion for the firm's customers. Thousands of farmers, ranchers and small business owners are still owed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"It's absolutely outrageous to suggest that bonuses should be paid to the same people who were in charge when the company went bankrupt and lost its customers' money," said Stabenow. "This was a terrible failure of leadership. The people in charge should be held accountable, not rewarded with bonuses."

"This is not your ordinary Chapter 11 bankruptcy," Roberts said. "The process to return customer funds to their rightful owners will take years. This unprecedented loss of segregated customer funds may well have occurred at the direction of MF Global officials. Any recovered funds should go to customers instead of winding up in the hands of those who mismanaged the funds in the first place." 

Click here to read more, including the full resolution passed by the Senate.

AFBF President Bob Stallman Applauds Resolution on Limits to Clean Water Act 

 

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation applauded the introduction of a resolution reiterating the intent of Congress to exempt farmers and ranchers from provisions of the Clean Water Act.

"H.R. 4278, the Preserving Rural Resources Act, introduced in the House of Representatives today, addresses a critical issue. The legislation reinforces agricultural exemptions granted to farmers and ranchers by Congress in Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

"Without these exemptions, farmers, ranchers and the forestry community will face increased federal regulatory and compliance costs, as well as constraints on land used for the production of food, fiber and fuel. We've seen a concerted effort by regulators to narrow the scope and usefulness of the CWA exemption Congress explicitly intended for agriculture. This legislation is intended to reaffirm congressional intent.

"We thank Reps. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) and Robert Hurt (R-Va.) for introducing the Preserving Rural Resources Act and look forward to working with them to ensure its swift consideration and approval by the House." 

New Brahman GE-EPD Improves Accuracy for Tenderness and Enhanced Marketability

The American Brahman Breeders Association (ABBA) has released a new genomic-enhanced expected progeny difference (GE-EPD) for tenderness that now incorporates DNA information from GeneSTAR® and Pfizer Animal Health. The results show up to a 10 percent increase in accuracy for tenderness when compared with the previous tenderness EPD offered by ABBA. In addition, GeneSTAR enabled more animals to have EPDs computed for this especially difficult and expensive to measure trait.

Brahman breeders were among the early adopters of GeneSTAR, which helped enable ABBA to incorporate this information into their genetic evaluation for the calculation of GE-EPDs, says Chris Shivers, executive vice president, ABBA.

"Since 2003, ABBA utilized a general genetic carcass evaluation test for six different traits - one of those being tenderness," Shivers says. "Now, working with Pfizer Animal Health and our breeders, we've compiled the actual field data from our carcass evaluation program with the results from GeneSTAR and these two sets of information combined are what form the most accurate genomic-enhanced EPD for tenderness yet provided by ABBA."

Click here for more on the new Brahman GE-EPD.

The Mountain of Public Perception Against LFTB May Be Impossible to Climb- at Least Right Now

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack held a joint news conference to discuss the fallout from recent news reports vilifying Lean Finely Textured Beef. The slang term that has caught the attention of the public is "pink Slime." This has scared many consumers who have demanded that supermarkets offer a product that is free of LFTB- and several major players have backed away from buying ground beef that includes LFTB as a part of its mix as a result. 

According to an AP news story- there may be little that government officials or the beef industry can do about the negative firestorm that has engulfed this process and the beef produced by it. "Larry Smith, with the Institute for Crisis Management public relations firm, said he's not sure the makers of pink slime -- including Cargill and Tyson Foods -- will be able to overcome the public stigma against their product at this point.

This N That- Select Over Choice, Prospective Plantings and TSCRA

It does not happen too often- we saw it on a midday report a few days back- but this is the first time that we have seen it on an end of the day report this year- and really for quite some time. The closing Boxed Beef Cutout Values as reported by USDA on Wednesday afternoon, March 28, showed select beef at a value of $184.32 and choice at $183.24- an eight cent premium for select over choice.  Both values were falling on Wednesday- Select just happened to fall less than choice- putting the leaner carcass value at a very slight premium. 

USDA releases its 2012 Prospective Plantings report on Friday morning- tomorrow- at 7:30 AM central time.  We had some analysis earlier this week from Justin Lewis over at KIS Futures on what the report may tells us- click here for that- and this morning we have some additional pre report guesses to share with you- from Allendale. Rich Nelson says that "Based on Allendale's 23rd Annual Acreage Survey, we look for the most corn acres since 1944.