From: Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.ccsend.com] on behalf of Ron Hays [ron@oklahomafarmreport.com]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:25 AM
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 Friday February 20, 2009
A service of Johnston Enterprises, American Farmers & Ranchers and Midwest Farm Shows!
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-- Wheat Breaks Out of Its Trading Range This Week- Unfortunately to the Downside
-- Letter Touting Direct Payments Sent to USDA's Tom Vilsack
-- From Earlier this Week- Heather Buckmaster and our Lean and Mean Beef Checkoff
-- Hog Farmers Happy With Checkoff
-- National FFA Week Kicks Off Tomorrow!
-- Express Spring Bull Sale Set for March 5 and 6 in Yukon
-- Looking at our Agricultural Markets...

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 have American Farmers & Ranchers Mutual Insurance Company as a regular sponsor of our daily update- click here to go to their AFR web site to learn more about their efforts to serve rural America!

We are also pleased to have as a regular sponsor on our daily email Johnston Enterprises- proud to have served agriculture across Oklahoma and around the world since 1893. For more on Johnston Enterprises- click here for their website!
And we salute our longest running email sponsor- Midwest Farm Shows, producer of the just concluded Tulsa Farm Show, as well as the April 2009 Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City. 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 Breaks Out of Its Trading Range This Week- Unfortunately to the Downside
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The Wheat Market has finally broken out of its most recent trading range- and the break out was to the downside- so says OSU Grain Marketing Economist Dr. Kim Anderson. Anderson adds that there is a good bit more downside to this market, especially if the condition of the southern plains hard red winter wheat crop looks pretty good as it breaks dormancy in the next few weeks.

Anderson blames growing global stocks of the major grains as the reason for latest price pressure. Stocks are growing, in part, because of the global economic mess slowing demand for meat as well as for biofuels.

Dr. Anderson's comments about this current set of market conditions are a part of his conversation with Clinton Griffiths that will be seen on the OSU Division of Agriculture's weekly TV show, SUNUP. We have Anderson's audio conversation with Griffiths linked below- click on the link below to jump to our Kim Anderson/Sunup story. Of course, you can see Clinton and Kim during one of the SUNUP segments on Saturday morning on OETA.
Clinton Griffiths tells us that one of the feature segments this week on SUNUP will be a look at ultrasound testing and your cattle herd- how it works- how its used and how it can be beneficial to your herd. Our webstory below will recap what else is planned for SUNUP this weekend.

Click here to read and hear more about current wheat market conditions with Dr. Kim Anderson- plus the full SUNUP set of topics for this weekend.


Letter Touting Direct Payments Sent to USDA's Tom Vilsack
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Eleven groups, led by the nation's largest general farm organization, American Farm Bureau, have written USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to state their case for protecting the Direct Payment component of the current Farm Program.

In the letter, the groups say "We believe that farm safety net payments and the stable supply of food, feed, fiber and fuel that those payments help ensure, actually provide great benefit to the public as a whole. Americans are blessed with the safest, most abundant and least expensive food supply in the world. That benefit is due to the hard work of American farmers and the safety net that provides both stability and a small degree of certainty to farmers in an industry where risk is enormous and can be impossible for a producer to control."

The groups contend that Direct Payments are the only reliable part of the farm safety net that gives farmers protection and the ability to pay for inputs and things like conservation cost share no matter what direction commodity prices take. Besides the AFBF, both the National Sorghum Producers and the National Association of Wheat Growers signed off on this letter.

Click here for more on this letter sent to Secretary Vilsack- and read it for yourself.


From Earlier this Week- Heather Buckmaster and our Lean and Mean Beef Checkoff
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At both the state and national levels, the dollar per head beef checkoff has had a fiscal reality check over the last year or so. The Oklahoma Beef Council suffered one of the biggest drops in collections of any beef council in the country last year (the fiscal year that ran from October 2007 through September 2008) because of the sharp fall-off in wheat pasture cattle.

We talk about how this has impacted the promotion, education and research efforts for the Oklahoma Beef Council with their Executive Director, Heather Buckmaster, and Heather also spends some time with us on some of the strategies being used to help advance checkoff efforts at the national level as well.

These two Beef Buzz shows aired earlier this week on Monday and Tuesday- but with some of the other news events of the week- we were not able to showcase them here on our daily email. So- click on the link below- it will take you to the Tuesday Beef Buzz which focuses on some of the state issues and there is a link within the Tuesday show to back up to the Monday Beef Buzz where we talk about a national perspective of the problem of having fewer dollars to spend.

Click here for our Tuesday Beef Buzz with Heather Buckmaster of the OBC.


Hog Farmers Happy With Checkoff
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USDA announced it will not hold a referendum on the Pork Checkoff Program as too few pork producers and importers signed up at USDA offices across the country asking for one.

The request for referendum was conducted Dec. 8 through Jan. 2 as a result of a lawsuit settlement between USDA and the Michigan Pork Producers Association in 2001. Under the terms of the settlement, if at least 15 percent of the 69,446 eligible pork producers and importers nationwide participated in the request for referendum, a referendum would have been conducted.

It really is an amazing vote of confidence for the Pork Checkoff- but all that bothered to go into local FSA offices were 96 participants and just 94 of those were valid requests for a referendum- and that was well short of the more than 10-thousand needed to trigger a referendum.


National FFA Week Kicks Off Tomorrow!
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The National FFA Organization will celebrate National FFA week Feb. 21-28, with the theme - Step Up, Stand Out - challenging FFA members to step up to responsibilities, stand out from the rest of the crowd and reach for success. Nearly half a million FFA members across the nation will participate in National FFA Week activities at the local and state levels.

During the week, national FFA officers will travel to different regions in the United States to visit local FFA chapters, participate in special events and visit with their state legislators, and in some cases, their governors. Individual chapters plan a weeklong schedule of events to promote FFA and agriculture in their schools and communities. That group includes Laila Hajii who hails from the Guthrie FFA Chapter and who is serving as a National Vice President this year.

We have more on this celebration on our website on our Blue-Green Gazette page- and this section of our website is about ready to get busy with lots of both 4-H and FFA coverage coming in the days ahead. Click on the link below for the National FFA week story- and stay there and browse through some of the recent stories that we have added about the rural youth of our state.

Click here for more on National FFA week that gets underway Saturday.


Express Spring Bull Sale Set for March 5 and 6 in Yukon
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The Express Ranches Spring Bull Sale and Commercial Female Sale will be on Thursday March 5th and Friday March 6th at the ranch in Yukon, Oklahoma. There will be more than 800 lots of Angus, Limousin and Lim-Flex bulls that will be offered- and all of the bulls have been tested as AM free.

Sale on Thursday starts at 12:30 pm with the Limousin bulls and Angus females will follow:
On Thursday March 5th we will be selling
75 Limousin and Lim-flex Bulls
50 purebred Angus pairs
160 commercial angus pairs and opens.
On Friday March 6th, the sale starts at 10 AM and we will be selling 522 Angus Bulls Fall Yearlings and Yearlings.

Click on the link below for the sale catalog on line at the Express Ranch website- or if you need a hard copy of the catalog, you call the office at 405-350-0044.

Click here for the Express Ranch Website and their catalog of the 2009 Spring Bull Sale


Our thanks to Midwest Farm Shows, American Farmers & Ranchers and Johnston Enterprises for their support of our daily Farm News Update. For your convenience, we have our sponsors' websites linked at the top of the email- check them out and let these folks know you appreciate the support of this daily email, as their sponsorship helps us keep this arriving in your inbox on a regular basis!

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


Looking at our Agricultural Markets...
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The market beatdown that we saw in El Reno on stocker and feeder cattle on Wednesday continued on Thursday in Apache. At Stockman's Livestock, yearling prices fell $2 to $6 per hundred weight- stockers and calves fell $4 to $8 per hundred. Five to six hundred pound steers sold for $$100 to $110 while seven to eight hundred pound steer yearlings came in from $86.50 to $91. It was a good sized run with 4,749 cattle reported at the Thursday sale. Click here for the full report- it should be updated to the Feb. 19 sale by around 8 AM or shortly thereafter.

Here are some links we will leave in place on an ongoing basis- Click on the name of the report to go to that link:
Our Daily Market Wrapup from the Radio Oklahoma Network with Ed Richards and Tom Leffler- analyzing the Futures Markets from the previous Day-
Ron on RON Markets as heard on K101 mornings with cash and futures reviewed- includes where the Cash Cattle market stands, the latest Feeder Cattle Markets Etc.
Previous Day's Wheat Market Recap- Two Pager From The Kansas City Board of Trade looks at all three US Wheat Futures Exchanges with extra info on Hard Red Winter Wheat and the why of that day's market

Daily Oklahoma Cash Grain Prices- As Reported by the Oklahoma Dept. of Agriculture.
The National Daily Feeder & Stocker Cattle Summary- as prepared by USDA.
The National Daily Slaughter Cattle Summary- as prepared by USDA.
Finally, Here is the Daily Volume and Price Summary from the Texas Cattle Feeders Association.



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