From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 06:20
To: 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 Monday February 5, 2007!
A service of Midwest Farm Shows
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-- Chuck Lambert of USDA returns with other U.S. officials to Seoul for meetings Wednesday and Thursday on Bone Chips
-- USDA's Tom Dorr headed for Oklahoma Tuesday to promote the USDA Farm Bill Proposal
-- Cotton Plantings likely to be down over 13% in 2007- so says the National Cotton Council.
-- Nitrogen Management Workshop in Canadian County is today- others slated for later in the week!
-- BOVINE Blog remains for your review of the 2007 Cattle Industry Convention
-- North Central Oklahoma Farm Survival Meeting planned for tomorrow night.
-- The Debate over the Beef Checkoff- is another dollar needed?

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 Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City April 19-21, 2007, as well as the Tulsa Farm Show held each December. 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.


Chuck Lambert of USDA returns with other U.S. officials to Seoul for meetings Wednesday and Thursday on Bone Chips
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They will be talking about our bone of contention the middle of this week in Seoul as Dr. Chuck Lambert of USDA, along with a USTR rep and several US technical people have accepted the South Korean invitation to come and talk about resolving the trade impasse over U.S. beef that has meant no US beef has successfully gotten past Korean inspectors despite their insistence that their market has been reopened to our beef.

We talked with Chuck Lambert at the NCBA International Markets Committee meeting during one of their breaks on Friday afternoon(the link is below)- and he tells us that the South Koreans indicated they were willing to talk about changing the inspections to reflect commercial trading practices- but added we will have to wait and see if anything will come out of these meetings this go round.

We also talked about the current dealings with the Japanese and the importance of the OIE determination of BSE risk that will be out this spring in our efforts to fully reopen several markets to US beef.

Click here to listen to Ron and Chuck Lambert discuss Korean and Japanese trade discussions


USDA's Tom Dorr headed for Oklahoma Tuesday to promote the USDA Farm Bill Proposal
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Tomorrow afternoon, the Oklahoma State House Chamber will host USDA's Undersecretary for Rural Development, Tom Dorr, as Undersecretary Dorr will be in the state to promote USDA's Farm Bill Proposal as unveiled by Secretary Mike Johanns. While Dorr's expertise is most certainly Rural Development, he will be prepared to give an overview of the complete farm bill proposal from the Commodity Title right through Research and Energy.

The rhetoric of the Secretary leading up to the release of the proposal was very bold- but in reality as we read the details of the Commodity Title, this is really not a lot more than a tweak of the current law, if you toss out the extreme Payment Limits concept the Secretary detailed. It does offer a change in the way you figure the Countercyclical payment, now to be based on revenue, it lowers loan rates and figures them on a five year Olympic average and raises direct payments some. If you are a cotton producer, the direct payment is raised the most- and you get it from day one, while the other program crops don't see an increase in the direct payments until year three of this proposal. While some tightening of the current payment limitations may happen in 2007, it is unlikely the income test that the Administration has proposed has any more chance of success than Rex Grossman did in the Super Bowl yesterday.

Undersecretary Dorr will be in the House Chambers at the State Capitol at 12:30 pm tomorrow- will give his overview and then will be available for questions. USDA has asked me to emcee this event- and we will introduce the Undersecretary and help keep the Question and Answer session moving forward. We'll look forward to seeing several of you there.


Cotton Plantings likely to be down over 13% in 2007- so says the National Cotton Council.
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U.S. cotton producers intend to plant 13.21 million acres of cotton this spring, down 13.6 percent from 2006, according to the National Cotton Council’s 24th Annual Early Season Planting Intentions Survey. Assuming an average abandonment rate, total upland and ELS harvested area would be about 11.99 million acres. Applying state-level yield assumptions to projected harvested acres generates a cotton crop of 20.66 million bales. This compares to 2006’s total production of 21.73 million bales. Assuming average seed-to-lint ratios, 2007 cottonseed production is projected at 7.21 million tons, down from 7.66 million last year.

Dr. Stephen Slinsky, the NCC’s senior economist, said, “assuming normal weather conditions, a U.S. crop between 20-21 million bales is very possible.” He adds that a high-low range for this year's crop might be 22 million bales on the high side nationally, while drought and a poor growing season over a substantial part of the cotton belt might push us down to an 18 million bale crop. NCC believes a lot of the acres coming out of cotton, especially over in the mid-south, will be going into corn here in 2007.

Here in Oklahoma, the expected decline is 13.9%, as Oklahoma producers have signaled their intention to plant 271,000 acres of cotton this year, compared to 315,000 acres in 2006. We have linked the news release from the National Cotton Council which includes the complete state by state data below.

Click here for the NCC Early Season Planting Intentions Survey.


Nitrogen Management Workshop in Canadian County is today- others slated for later in the week!
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Later today in Canadian County, OSU Extension will be presenting the second of five Nitrogen Management Workshops planned across the state. Tomorrow, the show moves to Dewey County and Wednesday a workshop is planned for Kay County and then the final of the five workshops will be happening in Mayes County next Monday, February 12.

Check with your local Extension office for details on the workshop closest to you over the next few days. We hope to get out and cover some of the activities this morning in El Reno.


BOVINE Blog remains for your review of the 2007 Cattle Industry Convention
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We posted stories and interviews all of last week while we were in Nashville for the 2007 Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show. There was a super group of Oklahomans that were a part of the Convention and several of them are featured in various interview segments we have on our Blog from last week.

The Bovine Blog is still up and will be available for several weeks for you to go back and review some of the highlights of the 2007 event. In fact, this week, we will be posting a few more interviews from industry figures that we want to share with you beyond what we will be able to offer on the airwaves of the Radio Oklahoma Network. We will call some of these to your attention as they are posted- but check back every day or so- and you'll find fresh offerings as we wrap up our wall to wall coverage of this biggest event in the life of our US beef cattle industry annually.

Click here to be taken to the Oklahoma Farm Report BOVINE Blog!


North Central Oklahoma Farm Survival Meeting planned for tomorrow night.
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USDA agencies, Conservation Districts and OSU Extension offices in Kay, Noble and Osage Counties have set a Tuesday February 6th seminar entitled "Farm Survival with Alternative Crops and Tillage" at the Pioneer Technology Center in Ponca City.

Value added crops, no-tillage strategies and water retention concepts will be featured at this evening meeting. While the deadline has passed for RSVPing to this meeting, you might give one of the following folks a call if you have interest in attending this event and have not yet reserved your spot- either Jeff Lockett in Ponca City at 580- 718-4240 or Melanie Oliver with the Osage Tribal Resources Group in Pawhuska at 918-287-5384.


The Debate over the Beef Checkoff- is another dollar needed?
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One of the hotter conversations we observed in multiple venues while in Nashville at the Cattle Industry Convention was over the direction of the Beef Checkoff in the days ahead. NCBA backed off an aggressive stance on pushing for an increase in the dollar now collected nationally, saying they wanted to study the issue more and consider the issue again at their 2008 meeting.

During the Region IV meeting of the group, Oklahoma Farmers Union Vice President Terry Detrick of Ames offered the opinion that we need more than the current dollar, and the key to getting it is to educate cattle producers, large and small, of the benefits they have received from the dollar now paid in- and what an extra buck could do in the areas of promotion and research.

Our Beef Buzz from this past Friday featured Terry's comments and we have it linked for you below. It echoes the thoughts of others we visited with over the course of the convention- including the Vice President of another organization, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau (Bob Drake of Davis)

Click here for the Beef Buzz with Ron talking to Terry Detrick on the Beef Checkoff


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



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