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 Farm Credit of East Central Oklahoma as a regular sponsor of our daily email update. Farm Credit of East Central Oklahoma has ten branch offices to serve your farm financing needs and is dedicated to being your first choice for farm credit. Check out their website for more information by clicking here!

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Southwest winner Clint Abernathy plants about one- third of his family's irrigated cotton no-till, using minimum tillage practices on the remainder because of the need to create and maintain water furrows for furrow irrigation. But conservation tillage works well with drip irrigation and center pivots. "The only problem we've had the last few years with no-till in irrigated fields is volunteer cotton," Abernathy noted. "We've had to cultivate to get rid of it. Other than that, we've not plowed it." He says 95 percent of his family's dryland cotton is no- till, and he uses minimum till on about 5,700 acres of wheat. He plants some cotton right behind the wheat combine, using the wheat stubble to hold soil and moisture and to protect cotton seedlings from blowing sand.

Farm Press sponsors the High Cotton Awards Program through a grant to The Cotton Foundation. "Farmers are the original environmentalists," says Hembree Brandon, editorial director at Farm Press Publications. "They, their families and their neighbors have the most to gain by protecting their soil, water and the environment where they live. "This year's winners represent the best of the environmental ethic displayed by so many of our farmers."

In order to understand what shoppers want, a survey of 4,000 consumers was conducted in an effort to: understand consumption patterns for beef and chicken, measure the importance and performance of beef and chicken, identify elements most likely to drive preference, and identify opportunities for gaining one more beef occasion per week. What the study found was that when forced to choose between chicken and beef, American consumers clearly prefer beef.
The new advertiisng campaign is a deliberate "feel good" message about beef, hoping to make beef relevant to a very different consumer than what was seen in the United States even ten years ago.

"The new advertising/branding campaign reinforces our efforts to maintain our message with consumers that beef is delicious and full of protein. And we all know protein helps keep our bodies strong," said John Dudley, beef producer from Comanche, Texas and former chair of the checkoff's Advertising Committee. "By leveraging checkoff dollars, we were able to create this campaign for launch in 2008 to remind consumers that they can, indeed, reclaim the dinner they love."
This continues to be a print and radio advertising campaign- there simply are not enough checkoff dollars to be able to afford a national TV advertising budget in 2008. And in the case of radio- the decision has been made to move on down the road from the long time voice of the beef checkoff- Actor Sam Elliott. National Beef Board officials are not willing to tell who the new voice belongs to- but it's our understanding that a current "hot" actor that will relate especially well to those females that are movie goers will be talking about beef as a destination- "a place where no appetite has been lost and the local time is always dinner."

In fact, we have gone backwards with South Korea- who claims they have found repeated cases of bone fragments as well as larger pieces of bone in boxes that were supposed to be from cattle under 30 months of age and to be free of bones. After finding more boxes with pieces of bone in them this past fall- they suspended all inspections of US beef into South Korea- effectively blocking all shipments from this country to Seoul.

We talk about the status of our trade with South Korea on today's Beef Buzz with Jay Truitt, Head of the Washington, DC office of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The daily Beef Buzz is our regular radio feature heard on radio stations across Oklahoma on the Radio Oklahoma Network- we have many of our Beef Buzz shows from the past year archived on our website- and we have today's show linked below so you can take a listen.

Click here to listen to Ron and Jay talk South Korea on today's Beef Buzz.

Hurt says U.S. corn acreage could decline by six percent in 2008. "All major crops are in short supply in the world, and some will outbid corn for acreage," Hurt explained. "The shortest of the major crops are wheat and soybeans, and the prices are expected to drive acres away from corn in 2008." At the same time, Hurt sees a period of rapid growth in new ethanol plant openings in the first half of 2008, when he estimates the nation's annual capacity will surge from the current 7.3 billion gallons to 11.8 billions gallons.

"This means the amount of corn required annually to feed that capacity grows from about 2.5 billion bushels today to 4 billion bushels by July of 2008," he said, further predicting that capacity requirement will grow to 4.5 billion bushels in the second half of the year. Even if these plants run below capacity,there will be a need to ration the small crop with high prices. "Given the outlook for $2-plus per gallon ethanol prices and $160 per ton distiller's grains into the fall of 2008, this implies we will be seeing cash corn prices in the $4.25 to $4.75 (per bushel) range." Hurt concludes "it will not be until 2009 when corn production may be able to meet the demand."

Nomination forms are available from the ODAFF by calling Jason Harvey, (405) 522-5563, at the agency web page that we have linked below, or by writing Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, Ag Hall of Fame, 2800 N. Lincoln Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK 73105. Any living person who derives the bulk of their income, or has retired from an agricultural enterprise, is eligible for nomination. Candidates for consideration are agricultural leaders who have exemplified personal values, dedication to community service, excelled in production and performance and who have provided a strong role model for the state's youth.

"This annual opportunity to recognize and honor an Oklahoma agricultural producer is one of the highlights of the year for us at the department of agriculture," said Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture, Terry Peach. "Reviewing the accomplishments and stories of past inductees into this Hall of Fame is inspiring." 2007's inductee into the Oklahoma Agriculture Hall of Fame was L.E. Castle from Jet, farmer/rancher and retired vocational agriculture teacher.

Click here for details on the 2008 Oklahoma Ag Hall of Fame Nominations.

R-Calf also applauds the likely implementation of COOL this coming fall saying this will "enable U.S. producers to maintain the separate identity of their U.S. cattle herd and engage in competition with growing volumes of imported beef and cattle."

R-Calf continues their opposition to Canadian beef- especially allowing any cattle or beef from cattle over 30 months of age coming in from our neighbor to the north- saying it is too risky to permit Canadian cattle in as that leaves us open to more cases of BSE crossing the border. We have their news release linked below of all the positions that the group considers as their focus for the new year.

Click here for more on the R-Calf policy positions for 2008

We head for New Orleans this weekend to cover the annual meeting of the American Farm Bureau Association. We also hope to get up to Bartlesville to cover the Four State Cattle Conference planned for next Wednesday that we have a link for on our Calendar page as well.

As we have mentioned before- be sure and let us know what events are going on in your organization- we want to share those with everyone on our calendar site. Just drop us an email and we will get stuff listed!

Click here for the Calendar page of 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