As consumers have lost their connection to how their food is grown, there are a lot of misconceptions about food. An Oklahoma Public Television special will take on myths about wheat. The "Truth about Wheat" special will air on OETA starting THIS EVENING, Thursday, September 3rd and the special will air a total of six times this month on OETA-HD and OETA-OKLA. The program is a joint effort of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.


Fellow farm broadcaster Ken Root is serving as the moderator, while the panel consists of Dr. Brett Carver, Regents Professor and Wheat Genetics Chair in Agriculture from Oklahoma State University, Dr. Julie Miller Jones, Board Certified Nutrition Specialist and Licensed Nutritionist and current Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn., and Sara Olsen, a Colorado wheat farmer, mother and Colorado Wheat Administrative Council board member.


I caught up with Dr. Carver to talk about the top myths associated with wheat and it's genetic makeup.  One of the myth is that today's wheat is toxic- a charge that has been floating around since 2011.


Carver says the facts are that "this is not a chronic poison that we are producing. This the same wholesome grain that was being produced 100 years ago and same wholesome grain that we inherited through evolution, domestication of this plant."


Another myth is that today's wheat is addictive. Carver said this argument stems from opponents finding older research on the topic, but those findings will not hold up scientifically.


"They'll use that to frame their argument and the argument is not scientifically-based," Carver said. "It's not fact-based."

Wheat has been a part of the human diet for thousands of years and Carver said the profile of wheat has not changed.  Click or tap here to listen to our full interview with one of the leading wheat breeders in the world. 


By the way- last week- we featured one of the other panelists and you can hear our conversation from then with Dr. Julie Jones on the worries she has about the gluten free craze pulling people away from getting the recommended amount of wheat and whole grains products on a daily basis- click here and take a listen to yours truly and Julie Jones.


This special will air this evening on OETA at 7:30 PM- check OETA listings for additional show times.

An attempt to list the Lesser Prairie Chicken by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened under the Endangered Species Act has been invalidated because the agency did not considered the conservation efforts of the landowners in the five states where the chicken resides.

In a 29-page ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Junell found the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't follow their own rule for evaluating conservation efforts when making listing decisions about the lesser prairie chicken.

The plaintiffs in the case were the Permian Basin Petroleum Association and four New Mexico counties. Defendants were the Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS Director Daniel Ashe, the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.


The plaintiffs challenged whether the FWS followed its own rules, properly explained its decision and responded to the plaintiffs' concerns. While the judge sided with the plaintiffs on the first claim, he ruled in favor of the defendants in the other two claims.


The Fish and Wildlife Service has said the "threatened" listing last year was the result of a steep decline in the bird's population in recent years. Five states are home to the lesser prairie chicken: Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

However, a recent aerial survey by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Association found an estimated 29,162 lesser prairie chickens, an increase from 19,643 in 2013 and 23,363 in 2014.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair and Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe says "The increase in LPC (lesser prairie chicken) population shows that states, industry, and farmers have proven their ability to steward their land and successfully conserve the LPS population without the need for big government interference."

Read more on this ruling- plus we have the link to the complete ruling document in our webstory- it's all available here.

The U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance® (USFRA®) is focused on answering questions consumers have about how food is grown and raised. These questions are often answered online on the organization's social media platforms and via its signature Food Dialogues® series of panel discussions. Additionally, USFRA gathers insights on the types of questions and concerns about agriculture that are top-of-mind by surveying consumers. Today, USFRA shared insights from a recent consumer survey focused on farming, ranching and sustainability.


"For USFRA, no question about agriculture is off the table," said Nancy Kavazanjian, Chairwoman of USFRA. "We want to make sure farmers and ranchers are involved in the most important conversations about food. We know that impact on the environment is a frequent conversation when it comes to food production. While farmers and ranchers are stewards of the land, we have not always been vocal voices in the environmental conversation, and we want that to change."


USFRA intends to use findings from the research to better answer questions consumers have about sustainability and agriculture. The survey found that 56 percent of all respondents agreed with the statement, "Farmers and ranchers use new technologies and innovations to protect the environment." While 47 percent of all respondents agreed with the statement, "The way that most of today's farming and ranching operations in the U.S. grow and raise food meets the standards of sustainability." However, when presented with the same statement, the survey revealed that women are less likely than men to agree that farming and ranching practices are sustainable - 37 percent of women versus 59 percent of men responding they are in agreement.

Additionally, the survey findings provided several insights to help farmers and ranchers better engage in conversations about sustainability practices on their farms or ranches. Click here to read more about the findings.

The United States has seen exceptional years for beef exports in 2013 and 2014. After two record setting years, this year has been challenging. Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist Derrell Peel said exports continue to struggle for a variety of reasons. The west coast labor strike impacted exports for the first half of the year, in logistically moving product out of the country. In having record high prices, Peel said that is being aggravated by a strong U.S. dollar, which is making U.S. products more expensive. On the other side, he said the strong dollar is also making foreign beef imports more favorable.


"We got high prices and relative shortages of certain products in the U.S. and so we're seeing a significant increase in beef imports last year and again this year," Peel said.


After several strong years for beef byproducts, that category has also been effected by the strong U.S. dollar. Peel said this impacts packers first and most directly.


"They've been losing $30 to $40 a head in revenue, which is a big part of the gross revenue margin to work with," Peel said. "Recently, we finally have seen those byproduct values appear to have bottomed out. They have recovered a little bit in the last two, three weeks, but its significantly lower level than we had for about three or four years prior to that. So, it's been a real challenge and its certainty another indicator of some of those issues in the global markets."


Feedlots continue to bear the brunt of this margin squeeze. Peel said 2015 is shaping up to be potentially the worst year for feedlots. That's on an average basis in terms of an annual budget series.   Peel said feedlots are caught in the middle.  Click here to read more or to listen to our conversation.

You know the story: the national cowherd dropped from 40 million cows to 28 million. National Cattlemen's Beef Association executive director of education John Paterson explains why....


"And many of us would say, it was due to the drought," Paterson said. "Ok? But there's about five reasons more than the drought and they were issues like high feed prices, the age of the producer, certain demographic of producers are leaving the ex- exiting the industry. I'll be honest with you a lot of our producers just couldn't believe what they were paying us for our calves and for our replacement heifers, even our cows and bulls. So we didn't keep them back. We sold them."


But times are good and that encourages rebuilding.


"The future is pretty bright, actually," Paterson said. "We think, at least until 2020, we're going to see some pretty strong cattle prices. Maybe not as high as 2014, but they're going to be high prices, profitable prices. At least until 2017 probably more like 2020."


Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas have seen the biggest jumps in cow inventory and 60 percent of the heifer retention is from those three states. Click here to read more about this rebuilding phase represents a chance to make herd improvements.

We saw what the yield impact of wheat not treated for rust this past spring in Oklahoma- the bushels produced when a farmer applied a fungicide versus those bushels lost because of no chemical application was really an eye opener in 2015. 

However, the rusts that we face- stripe rust and leaf rust- are relatively benign compared to the most feared of wheat diseases now found on the planet- and that is Ug99 Stem Rust.

Scientists have been working on slowing and/or stopping this disease for years- but it continues to evolve and expand its coverage. 

It has yet to land in any of the major wheat exporting countries- but it is getting closer and closer to the Black Sea countries- and even in Australia and here in America- we worry about the "what if" scenario of if it showed up one growing season soon.

Although significant progress to combat the disease has been made over the past 10 years, the pathogen has continued to evolve and migrate to new areas," said Hans Braun, head of the Global Wheat Program at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.

There will be a conference in Australia later this month looking at Ug99 from all angles- we have posted a story highlighting that conference and highlighting the ebb and flow of the breeding work that has been done to deal with this aggressive wheat disease- click here to get up to date on this disease that could bring terror to wheat farmers if it should ever show up around here.