Howdy Neighbors!

Here's your morning farm news headlines from the Director of Farm Programming for the Radio Oklahoma Network, Ron Hays. We are proud to welcome KIS Futures as a regular sponsor of our daily E-Mail. KIS Futures provides Oklahoma Farmers & Ranchers with futures & options hedging services in the livestock and grain markets- Click here for their website or call them at 1-800-256-2555.

We are also proud to have American Farmers and Ranchers Mutual Insurance Company as a regular sponsor of our daily update- click here to go to their NEW AFR web site to learn more about their efforts to serve rural America!
And our email this morning is also a service of Midwest Farm Shows, producer of the just concluded Tulsa Farm Show, as well as the Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City this coming April! 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.

As we begin 2008- we have historically high prices for grains and oilseeds- and the expectation that we can expect another battle played out in the marketplace over how many acres will be allocated to each crop this coming growing season.

While Oklahoma has had only limited involvement in the biofuels bonanza that has supercharged the US rural economy- we continue to wait on word of a groundbreaking of our first commercial sized ethanol plant in the state- we still anticipate that will be in Blackwell- perhaps this spring.

As we watch all of these issues and many many more- we look forward to helping keep you informed on those stories that have importance to our farm and ranch community here in the state of Oklahoma and the surrounding southern Great Plains! I suspect we will have plenty of topics to cover day to day as we write this daily update for you- hang on we ride into 2008 together!

"Consumer demand for food is growing, crops are competing for planted area, speculators are more active in commodities and trade barriers are falling," Tracy said. "These forces should push U.S. wheat futures prices into a new range of around $6.00 or more per bushel or about $220 per metric ton, assuming favorable weather and new crop production grows as expected. If there are significant production problems, prices are likely to shoot up again as they have this year." Noting that the recent weather-driven spike in world wheat prices has taken the lion's share of attention, Tracy pointed out that rising population and more disposable income in developing countries is pushing a steady increase in cereal grain demand. "At the same time, we see a gap between use and production," he told the conference participants. "The world has produced more wheat than we used in only two of the last nine years."

The pressure on world wheat stocks is likely to stay fairly strong, Tracy said. "Demand for vegetable oil, feed grains and meat is rising even faster than for food grains. Factor in the biofuels boom and transgenic trait benefits to corn, soybean and canola producers and you can see that, at least for now, wheat can only compete for hectares with higher sustained prices."
In turn, the run-up in agricultural commodity prices and the advent of round-the-clock electronic trading has attracted investors. While it would not be possible for commodity producers and buyers to use the futures and options markets to manage price risk without speculators, the high volume of speculative trading appears to be sustainable. "The people who grow the grain and the people who actually use it are no longer the only ones determining prices," Tracy said. That means wheat prices will remain volatile as investors move in and out of their positions.

"One of our goals is to provide sales offering quality cattle that progressive ranchers want to have in their herds back home," said Bradford S. Barnes, Stock Show executive vice president / general manager. "We're proud that our auctions have set records for the past several years."

The schedule of auctions include:
Texas Longhorn Select Heifer Sale - West Arena - January 12, 4:00 p.m.
National Braunvieh Sale - West Arena - January 13, 6:00 p.m.
Best of the West Angus Bull Sale - West Arena - January 19, 1:00 p.m.
Stars of Texas Angus Female Sale - West Arena - January 25, 1:00 p.m.
The Cowtown Classic Limousin Sale - Cattle Sale Arena - January 25, 6:00 p.m.
Maine-Anjou "Cowtown Classic" Sale - Cattle Sale Arena - January 26, 12:00 noon
Charolais Association of Texas Sale of Sales - Cattle Sale Arena - January 26, 5:00 p.m.
Commercial Hereford Heifer Sale - West Arena - January 27, 1:00 p.m.
Fort Worth National "Cowtown Select" Hereford and Polled Hereford Sale - West Arena - January 27, 3:00 p.m.
Southwestern Exposition Invitational 21st Annual Commercial Heifer Sale - West Arena - February 3, 12:30 p.m.

Information on any sale can be obtained by calling the Stock Show office at (817) 877-2400.

For more information on the 2008 Southwestern Livestock Expo in Ft. Worth, Click Here!

The Women in Ag Conference is planned for February 7, 2008 from 8:30-3:00pm at the Renfro Center on the Northern Oklahoma College Campus in Tonkawa. Registration will be just $15, with the deadline February 1, 2008. You can pick up registration forms at banks, chamber of commerce, agricultural businesses, or call the Kay County Conservation District at 580- 362-2438 for more information.

The General Conference Speakers will include Joe Kreger, former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and Mark Gibson, 8th District Attorney who will speak on "Fraud and Exploitation of the Elderly." There will also be numerous Break Out Sessions including:
Understanding and Reading Your Credit Score
Financial Risks on Today's Farms
Sheep and Goat Care
Landowner Liability
and the burden and joys of the Sandwich Generation- Caring for Parents, Children and Grandchildren.

Jay Truitt joins us as we talk about the longer term implications that surround grain based ethanol and cellulosic ethanol for the livestock sector both today as well as for years into the future. We talk about this "big picture" topic on today's first Beef Buzz of 2008- heard on great radio stations across the state on the Radio Oklahoma Network, and can be accessed on our web site, WWW.OklahomaFarmReport.Com. We have many of our Beef Buzz reports on our site on the- you guessed it- Beef Buzz page!

AND- we have today's Beef Buzz linked directly for you below as you can hear Truitt from a year ago as went to Nashville and the 2007 Cattle Industry Convention- and you will quickly realize how little has changed over the last year in this debate.

Click here for today's Beef Buzz with Ron and Jay Truitt of NCBA!

Well, the Golden Arches faces big competition as I have seen the new Double Cheeseburger being offered by Wendy's advertised during the College Bowl Game lineup over the last few days- not just once or twice, but several times- call me slow, but it took me a few times before I figured out the ad with the crowd of Lincolns being offered a pep talk by a guy with a Wendy's hair piece on- I finally understood these Lincolns represented the 99 pennies that it takes to buy a Double Cheeseburger from Wendys.

While the value cuts are great- and promotions that show off a juicy steak are nice- you can still sell a lot of pounds of ground beef when a battle breaks out between two of the big players in fast food- by the way, I have seen a couple of ads by McDonalds touting their double cheeseburger for a buck- just not as many as the other guys.

The districts varied from sixteen and a half inches of rainfall in the Panhandle this past year to 52 and a quarter inches of rainfall in the central district- this based on the data compiled by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.

We have saved a couple of maps for you to take a look at that show the total rainfall across the state for 2007- and the second map shows us the deviation from "normal" on a statewide basis. They are interesting to take a look at- and we have them linked on our weather page at WWW.OklahomaFarmReport.Com. Check them out by going to the link we have below.

Click here to go to our weather page at WWW.OklahomaFarmReport.Com

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