From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 22:12
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 Tuesday July 17, 2007!
A service of Midwest Farm Shows
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-- Wheat Harvest nearing end- three fourths of the acres expected to be cut have been.
-- Is this the breakout year for winter canola?
-- Hotter Weather Just what the Cotton Doctor Ordered
-- The Farm Bill Follies Move to the Full House Ag Committee Today.
-- Huge Feeder Cattle Week as Sellers moved cattle into a stronger market!
-- Take a look at Duster- one of the new OSU wheat varieties for 2007!
-- Cudd Quarter Horse Sale happens this Saturday in Woodward.

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 recently concluded Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City, 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.


Wheat Harvest nearing end- three fourths of the acres expected to be cut have been.
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By mid July, the Oklahoma wheat harvest in most years is a fading memory- good or bad. In 2007, one fourth of the expected acres to be harvested this year have not been harvested and we continue to expect many of those acres to never see a combine in them this year. Our neighboring states of Texas and Kansas have done much better, with 87% of the Texas crop now harvested and 91% of the Kansas crop has been combined.

Spring planted crops and hay are rated in mostly good to excellent condition in our state- with native hay being called 65% in good to excellent shape, alfalfa hay in 54% good to excellent shape, and the corn crop rated in 82% good to excellent shape with more being rated excellent than good! Peanuts, cotton and grain sorghum are all also in mostly good to excellent shape as we hit the middle of July.

We had heavy rains in parts of the state this past week- but it does look like a string of hot, humid and sunny days have arrived this week. 92% of the subsoil moisture is adequate to surplus rating, while the topsoil moisture is virtually unchanged from last week and stands at 91% adequate to surplus this week. Click below and you can read more about this week's crop weather conditions.

Click here for the latest Crop Weather Update for the state of Oklahoma.


Is this the breakout year for winter canola?
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There is a lot of interest in pushing hard for up to 100,000 acres of winter canola to be planted in Oklahoma this fall- and a major winter canola meeting is coming up this Thursday that will be worth a tank of gas to use to come and hear what the possibilities are for canola in 2007-2008. The meeting is planned for the Garfield County Fairgrounds in Enid at the Hoover Building.

We sat down and visited at length with Dr. Tom Peeper about the canola crop this past year- and it appears that canola did pretty well with all the adversity we had during the spring growing season. The biggest problem is that we have several areas where a lot of canola might have been planted but there was ZERO moisture and that meant no opportunities to get the seed in the ground and germinated.

There will be a free lunch being provided courtesy of Monsanto on Thursday and there will be several important announcements that are really exciting for the future of canola production in our state- including a canola based commodity group and a real live in-state marketing option that will make it viable to grow and market our crop without having to rely on a crushing facility in North Dakota. Plan to be at that meeting on Thursday- we have details about it on our Calendar page of our web site- click here for that- and we have a link below for the conversation we had with Tom Peeper about this past year, the lessons learned and the opportunities ahead here in 2008.

Click here for the conversation between Ron and Tom Peeper on Oklahoma Canola Production.


Hotter Weather Just what the Cotton Doctor Ordered
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That's Dr. J.C. Banks, Oklahoma state cotton specialist that is headquartered in Altus, heart of cotton country for the state. He reports this week that we are finally getting some really good growth in many of our cotton fields.

"With wam weather, cotton has been rapidly growing and all mid-May planted cotton should be producing some blooms. Mepiquat-based growth regulator applications have been applied to unstressed cotton. Areas in the field that have been severely waterlogged should be coming out of the stress at this time. Many low areas that have been extremely wet are continuing to show chlorosis and stunring due to excessive water. These areas might benefit from a cultivation of the middles, but be careful not to cultivate close to the plants. Cotton that has been too wet will have a shallow root system due to a lack of oxygen deeper in the soil."

Dr. Banks adds "Cultivation close to the plants has the potential to destroy much of this shallow root system. The plant will continue to place emphasis on root growth until it starts being pulled down due to that load, so we should have a week or two to get a good root system going." According to Jerry Goodson, OSU entomology research assistant, we have been having some aphids show up in fields. In these fields, Jerry also has been observing a build up of beneficial insects so hopefully, the beneficials will be taking care of the aphid population. Spraying for aphids at this time will also decrease the benfficial insect populations and could possibly set up the cotton for some sprayings later in the season. "Earlier damage to the squares by fleahoppers will delay the crop somewhat, and in these areas, an application of growth regulator may be needed to keep the plant from developing too much vegetative growth."

Click here for more on the Oklahoma cotton scene from NTOK.


The Farm Bill Follies Move to the Full House Ag Committee Today.
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At midday today, the markup of the 2007 Farm Bill by the full House Ag Committee is scheduled to begin. There are a lot of questions to be answered about where the Committee will land on several key issues, especially in the Commodity Title and also in the Conservation Title.

There are a lot of naysayers out there taking pot shots at what the Chairman of the House Ag Committee is thinking at this point in the game. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns does not like the Commodity Title crafted by Peterson after his Subcommittee voted 18 to nothing to leave the Commodity program virtually unchanged compared to the 2002 farm law. Secretary Johanns wrote a stern letter to Peterson and we have it linked below.

Several Liberal leaning Church Organizations have jumped ont he Dump the Traditional Farm Program Hay Ride and they plan on eating breakfast together this morning in Washington and taking turns dumping on the House Ag Committee and praising Farm21, the Ron Kind alternative. Among the church organizations that will have representatives present for that media event this morning will be the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Evangelical Lutherans and the Faith Based Bread for the World.

Meanwhile the Republican Minority on the House Ag Committee, led by Bob Goodlatte, continue to call on the Democrats to get more specific about where they intend to get money for all of the "extras" that people say they want in this 2007 farm bill. Last night, the Agriculture Committee Republicans were unanimous in their objection to proceeding to markup the farm bill in a bipartisan fashion until the money promised to the Committee is produced. Additionally, the Republican Members of the Committee expressed their intention to meet with the Chairman once they have had the opportunity to review the bill with its comprehensive manager's amendment language and have received the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores. "In the short-term, we're being asked to support a bill that we've yet to see in final form without the final CBO scores. In the long-term, we're being asked to take a bill to the floor that lacks sufficient funding to withstand a barrage of potentially devastating amendments. We continue to urge the Chairman to pull in the reins and proceed when the funding is made available," said Ranking Member Bob Goodlatte. It's going to be an interesting ride- so hang onto your hats!

Click here for the letter sent by Secretary Johanns to Colin Peterson blasting his farm bill proposal.


Huge Feeder Cattle Week as Sellers moved cattle into a stronger market!
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Superior Livestock is the Big Dog when it comes to satellite and video and internet auctions for livestock- and the sale held this past week was one for the record books, as some 330,000 head of feeder cattle and calves were sold into a generally higher market that was three to six dollars higher for yearling cattle, and as much as five to eight dollars up for calves under 600 pounds.

This sale, which broke all previous records, was the major contributor toward making the week of July 11-16 undoubtedly the largest single week of feeder cattle contracting that the industry has seen. The combined total of contracts posted by video auctions and the direct country trading supported by recent rallies in the CME Feeder Cattle and Live Cattle Futures provided producers an excellent opportunity to forward sell feeders and the response was tremendous. Corn prices, which have dropped dramatically since the previous sale, have been a major impetus in supporting feeder cattle price increases.

Midwestern feedlots that have contracts for wet distiller's grain by products from alcohol plants have been particularly aggressive for feeder cattle as they look for inventory to consume these wet byproducts that have an extremely short shelf life. Feedlots have only a small window of opportunity to use wet byproducts before they go out of condition and contracts for specific amounts of these wet byproducts forces them to keep their lots full. Dry feedstuffs like corn have always allowed feedlots the opportunity to leave pens empty during certain times of the year but wet byproducts force them into a different management style and the recent rally on the CME Live Cattle Futures also offered them additional opportunity for risk management. It is the distillers grains that continue to give corn belt feeders an advantage for the time being over the southern great plains. However, that advantage will narrow if several ethanol plants now being developed and/or built become reality here in our part of the country.

Click here for a recap of this historic sale of 330,000 head of feeder cattle and calves by Superior.


Take a look at Duster- one of the new OSU wheat varieties for 2007!
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The "Graze n Grain" concept is one of the key attributes of one of two new varieties being released by Oklahoma State University. "Duster" is the name of this new variety and it has exhibited the ability to be grazed but then rebound well to get ready for a grain crop after providing forage.

This variety has been 19 years in the making, coming from parentage that was developed in the Pioneer wheat efforts- and selected out of that background when OSU took over the Pioneer wheat breeding efforts in the early 1990s.

It has resistance to Leaf Rust as a part of its pedigree, and also can handle the Hessian Fly very well. We have a brochure on this new wheat variety that OSU has just printed- and we have it linked on our web site for you. Click here for that brochure- tomorrow, by the way, we will have another wheat variety that OSU is putting into the spotlight here in 2007- Centerfield.

Click here for more information on the Hard Red Winter Wheat, Duster!


Cudd Quarter Horse Sale happens this Saturday in Woodward.
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If you are even casually involved in the Quarter Horse industry in this part of the country, you know the name Cudd- and this coming Saturday, July 21 will be the annual production sale of Cudd Quarter Horses at the Ranch in Woodward, Oklahoma. Sale time is 11 am.

They will be offering approximately 120 top notch horses during this annual sale, and there will be lots of "Goldseeker" bloodlines that will be included in the offering.

For more on the sale, we have provided a link below. If you want to call with questions, you can call 580-256- 6666.

Click here for the Sales Info on this Saturday's Cudd Quarter Horse Production Sale.


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 and make plans to be an exhibitor at either the Tulsa Farm Show this December or the Southern Plains Farm Show next spring!

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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