From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 04:30
To: ron.hays@radiooklahoma.net; ron@oklahomafarmreport.com
Subject: Oklahoma's Farm News Update
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Oklahoma's latest farm and ranch news
Your Update from Ron Hays of RON for Wednesday November 15, 2006
A service of Midwest Farm Shows
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-- A little rain and a LOT of wind!
-- From the Governor's Water Conference- Ken Crawford and the Drought.
-- Bigger Carcass weights really starting to impact the eating experience- so says Dr. Brad Morgan of OSU.
-- Imported Beef is a part of the mix at your local Golden Arches!
-- Coming this Friday- Fast Food Nation!
-- Chisholm Trail Fall Roundup happens this Saturday!
-- Our thoughts and Prayers are with those at today's Memorial Service for Justin Whitefield.

Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. Our email this morning is a service of Midwest Farm Shows, featuring the Tulsa Farm Show December 7-9, 2006 and the Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City April 19-21, 2007. Check out details of both of these exciting shows at the official website of Midwest Farm Shows by clicking here.

If you have received this by someone forwarding it to you, you are welcome to subscribe and get this weekday update sent to you directly by clicking here.


A little rain and a LOT of wind!
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The wind has been howling overnight in parts of Oklahoma- with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour. Other areas will see the winds pick up as we move through Wednesday- it will definitely qualify as a "blue norther." Wind chills will make Wednesday feel like one of the rawest days this fall in many locales.

Amounts of rain have been relatively small- a few tenths to a half inch or so at best as of early this morning. Some of that rain has fallen in the very driest areas of the state- so anything will be welcome- but the welcome mat is just barely getting wet in this case. The rains have been steady and continue as we prepare to shoot this E-mail out on this Wednesday morning.

You can go and check the latest amounts of rain at the OKlahoma Mesonet locations around the state. We have linked th map that shows current conditions- from there you go up to the left hand side of the page to current weather- then click on rainfall and then on Rainfall since Midnight today.

Click here to be taken to the Oklahoma Mesonet site.


From the Governor's Water Conference- Ken Crawford and the Drought.
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It was not a rosy picture that one of the key architects of the Oklahoma Mesonet painted on Tuesday at the 27th annual Governors's Conference on Water. Ken Crawford of the University of Oklahoma and current head of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey told participants at the Conference that drought seems to like to come in five to ten year hunks of time- and that he sees this current drought actually starting in 2005- based on average statewide rainfall. Some would differ with his assessment as to how long we have been dry- I talked with Dan Childs of Noble Foundation at the Beef Quality Summit about the Crawford timeline and he says they have been mostly dry since the late 1990s.

Back to Dr. Crawford- he told the group that calendar year 2006 will turn out to be one of the 10 driest years on record in the past 110 years of record keeping in the state- based on a statewide average of a little over 23 inches of rain we have received since the first of January, The norm statewide is slightly over 34 inches annually.

The current drought is centered over six or seven north central counties- but the sub soil moisture readings are more ominous than the top soil readings- since they show almost the northern half of the state has depleted moisture reserves ten inches to two feet down in the soil profile. He adds the chances of recharging the subsoil is not very good over the next ninety days- especially in the northern half of the state. You can click below to hear our conversation with Dr. Crawford right after his presentation yesterday at the Cox Center in downtown OKC.

Click here to listen to Ron and Ken Crawford on the current Drought conditions here in Oklahoma


Bigger Carcass weights really starting to impact the eating experience- so says Dr. Brad Morgan of OSU.
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Dr. Brad Morgan, Meat Scientist at OSU in Stillwater, was both a presenter as well as the moderator of an incredible panel yesterday at a beef industry seminar being held by Beef Magazine in Oklahoma City. Dr. Morgan guided a panel that included representatives from our very largest beef buyers at the end of the beef chain as they talked about their customers, and how they approach the buying and selling of beef.

The largest retailer of beef in the U.S. is Walmart- and Tony Ribble, Beef Category Manager for Walmart has evolved from regular unbranded USDA Select fresh beef to starting to offer more choices in select stores that have the customer base that have asked for choices. Some of those choices include an in house branded Angus beef, Coleman Natural beef (a "never-ever" product) and they are even testing Laura's Lean Beef in about 50 stores around the country. Tony's take away message was that Walmart always keeps in front of their people that the "Customer is ALWAYS number 1."

The panel also included McDonalds and Outback Steakhouse. The comments from Outback's David Burns is that they are also all about the customer and are looking for portion sizes that people are asking for- and in many cases that is a slightly smaller cut- which can be very challenging to source with more and more big carcasses. As Brad Morgan told us- "Big carcasses yield bigger cuts and that can cause big problems." We talked with Dr. Morgan about this issue on today's Beef Buzz from the Radio Oklahoma Network- and it is linked for your convenience below.

Click here to listen to the Beef Buzz with Ron and Dr. Brad Morgan of OSU.


Imported Beef is a part of the mix at your local Golden Arches!
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While representatives of Walmart and Outback said they source only USDA fresh product from plants in this country- Dr. Robert Cannell, Director of the Supply Chain for McDonalds USA says the ground beef they are currently using is about ten percent from Australia and/or New Zealand, based on the fact that there is simply not enough lean ground product available from the US beef pipeline to fulfill their needs. Cannell is responsible for buying up to a billion pounds of beef annually for the fast food chain.

Regarding source verification and/or Animal ID, Cannell says that McDonalds is not planning on requiring source verification from their suppliers- but that animal ID in general is something that the industry simply has to provide for the good of everyone. He told the group during the Q&A session "what is the potential cost of a disease outbreak when officials can't get their arms around it. You have to have Animal ID traceback to avoid a catastrophe."


Coming this Friday- Fast Food Nation!
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It was mentioned at the Beef Magazine's Quality Summit that the movie that is designed to blast away at the current red meat industry from producer to the retail and fast food retail outlets will be out this coming Friday.

It was shared by one of his sons at the conference that NCBA Vice President Paul Hitch had spent several hours this past week getting some media training (along with other NCBA officers) in how to respond to media inquiries if they come once this movie hits general distribution this week

The reviews that can be found if you do a google serach on the title are not very good- this movie will likely be a bomb- but it does signal another way that activists are coming at the meat industry hard and fast. In this case, an individual pushing his agenda hard- very hard. We do have the link below for the movie trailer in case you have not seen anything on this production as of yet.

Click here to be taken to the Movie trailer for Fast Food Nation.


Chisholm Trail Fall Roundup happens this Saturday!
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There will be a tremendous set of replacement females for sale this Saturday at OKC West in El Reno. Some 1500 replacement females with angus genetics will be offered, beginning at 1 pm.

There will also be fifty Express Ranch Bulls ready for heavy service that will be offered as well. For information on the sale, click below for more details- ro contact Ralph Wade at 405-224-6100.

Click here for more information on the Chisholm Trail Fall Roundup!


Our thoughts and Prayers are with those at today's Memorial Service for Justin Whitefield.
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The memorial service to celebrate the life of Justin Whitefield, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Youth Expo and legal counsel and lobbyist for the Oklahoma Farm Bureau will be held this morning- a reception time is planned for 10 AM and the service to follow at 11 AM at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City.

As we have mentioned to you- there is a memorial fund to honor Justin by supporting the youth of our state- you can call the Bank of Western Oklahoma for more details at 580-225-3434.

Click here for more on the life of Justin Whitefield as related by the Oklahoma Youth Expo staff.


Our thanks to Midwest Farm Shows for their support of our daily Farm News Update. Go to their website at the link at the top of today's email for more information on either the Tulsa Farm Show or the Southern Plains Farm Show.

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



God Bless! You can reach us at the following:
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phone: 405-473-6144
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