Quiet Day at Elkhart Grain Company
I stopped by the grain elevator in Elkhart, Illinois (pop. 403) yesterday. It was quiet. Elkhart Grain owns the...
Posted by Todd E. Gleason on Wednesday, February 17, 2016
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About NCSA's Blue Waters Super Computer
Blue Waters Website
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Todd Gleason tours the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Blue Waters facility on the University of Illinois campus.
FarmDocDaily Crop Insurance Tools Updated
Farmers around the nation are about to tap the birthplace of the internet browser for crop insurance data. Really! It’s a true statement. Todd Gleason has more from the University of Illinois.
Before Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Google’s Chrome, the first internet browser was called Mosaic. It was developed on the Univeristy of Illinois campus as part of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. NCSA is one of the places the internet was born. Today it is home to Blue Waters one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. And as of this month NCSA is home to the data farmers will use to help them make decisions about crop insurance via the FarmDoc website says NCSA’s Scott Wilkin.
Before Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Google’s Chrome, the first internet browser was called Mosaic. It was developed on the Univeristy of Illinois campus as part of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. NCSA is one of the places the internet was born. Today it is home to Blue Waters one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. And as of this month NCSA is home to the data farmers will use to help them make decisions about crop insurance via the FarmDoc website says NCSA’s Scott Wilkin.
Quote Summary - The way it will work is as an interactive website. It will actually be running on the web servers sitting at NCSA. We take the data, somebody says we want to make this happen; we want to understand the costs and benefits for an Enterprise Unit in Pike County, or Piatt County, or Champaign County. It runs the numbers automatically. It does the calculations right then. So, it is very sustainable.So big deal you might says, “The FarmDOC (farm-doc) site has been home to the default crop insurance tools farmers in twelve corn and soybean producing states have used for a longtime.” This is true, but those have been hand-updated through an enormous Excel spreadsheet. The realtime calculations are the key and the reason agricultural economist Bruce Sherrick says the FarmDOC team moved the data to NCSA.
Quote Summary - From my perspective, they may not agree, but I think it has been a blast to see how folks who think about that as a normal environment attack a problem like this. By most of the scales they are used to working at we are probably a very small problem. By the scale we are used to working at, this was a really large numeric problem. So to be able to turn it over to somebody that thinks, not in terms of… a few billions is not a large number to somebody used to working in a National Center for Supercomputing applications environment.NCSA is handling the front and back end of the new crop insurance calculators found on the FarmDOC pages. Those calculators must handle large stress loads during the Crop Insurance decision making time from March 1 to March 15. The volume of users coupled with the volume of calculations all done in realtime is mind boggling no more. NCSA will do the heavy lifting to help farmers quickly evaluate their federal crop insurance options.
Bull Buyers Guide
It’s that time of year when farmers and ranchers buy bulls for their herds. They’re likely sifting through stacks of bull sale catalogs. Todd Gleason has some advice on evaluating a sire’s potential.
Tillage Practices Vary Across the United States
USDA ERS, Washington, D.C. -
No-till and strip-till are two of many tillage methods farmers use to plant crops. In a no-till system, farmers plant directly into the undisturbed residue of the previous crop without tillage, except for nutrient injection; in a strip-till system, only a narrow strip is tilled where row crops are planted. These tillage practices contribute to improving soil health, and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. During 2010-11, about 23 percent of land in corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat was on a farm where no-till/strip-till was used on every acre (full adopters). Another 33 percent of acreage in these crops was located on farms where a mix of no-till, strip-till, and other tillage practices were used on only some acres (partial adopters). In the Prairie Gateway, Northern Great Plains, and Heartland regions—which account for 72 percent of corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton acreage—more than half of these crop acres were on farms that used no-till/strip-till to some extent. Partial adopters have the equipment and expertise, at least for some crops, to use no-till/strip-till; these farmers may be well positioned to expand these practices to a larger share of cropland acreage. This chart is from the ERS report, Conservation-Practice Adoption Rates Vary Widely by Crop and Region, December 2015.
No-till and strip-till are two of many tillage methods farmers use to plant crops. In a no-till system, farmers plant directly into the undisturbed residue of the previous crop without tillage, except for nutrient injection; in a strip-till system, only a narrow strip is tilled where row crops are planted. These tillage practices contribute to improving soil health, and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. During 2010-11, about 23 percent of land in corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat was on a farm where no-till/strip-till was used on every acre (full adopters). Another 33 percent of acreage in these crops was located on farms where a mix of no-till, strip-till, and other tillage practices were used on only some acres (partial adopters). In the Prairie Gateway, Northern Great Plains, and Heartland regions—which account for 72 percent of corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton acreage—more than half of these crop acres were on farms that used no-till/strip-till to some extent. Partial adopters have the equipment and expertise, at least for some crops, to use no-till/strip-till; these farmers may be well positioned to expand these practices to a larger share of cropland acreage. This chart is from the ERS report, Conservation-Practice Adoption Rates Vary Widely by Crop and Region, December 2015.
Laughing, Learning, & Singing with Chili Peppers
On a bright snowy Saturday in Urbana, Illinois about 300 herb enthusiasts gathered for the 17th time. Todd Gleason has more on the annual Herb Day.
Thinking Critically About How Organic Foods Sell
Organic food products are sold widely in the United States. The context in which these products are sold give them unique attributes from the consumer perspective. Todd Gleason has more with a University of Illinois agricultural economist on virtues, vices, and shelf space of organic foods.
Ag Policy & the Bourbon Trail
University of Illinois agricultural policy specialist Jonathan Coppess traveled the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and thought about how agricultural policy brought it into being.
Using Social Media to Market Locally Grown Foods
University of Illinois Extension Educator Andy Larson talks about using social media like Facebook and Twitter to build a clientele base for locally grown foods and Know-Your-Farmer campaigns.
Touring the IL Speciality Crops Trade Show
Todd Gleason tours the Illinois Speciality Crops, AgroTourism Conference trade show floor to demonstrate diversity within the industry.
MarketMaker to Connect Illinois Farmers Markets
A University of Illinois developed online database and marketing tool for farmers has matured into an independent business. MarketMaker is now working to better connect food to consumers through the Illinois Farmers Market Association.
Food & Agriculture Road Map for Illinois
Up next, a plan to make Illinois and the Chicago region into a leading global hub for food and agriculture innovation. We’ll learn about FARM Illinois from Todd Gleason.
DowDuPont Merger of Equals
Dow and DuPont today announced the two companies would combine in a merger of equals. DowDuPont, the merged business, will then be split into three independent publicly traded companies; agriculture, material science, and speciality products.
The company's leadership, Andrew Liveris from Dow and Ed Breen from DuPont, say the projected market value of the merger is $30 billion dollars, with about a billion dollars worth of growth synergies achieved by the merger itself. Market capitalization of the new DowDuPont is $130 billion dollars.
Most current shareholders will each own approximately 50 percent of the combined company.
Listen to the closing comments from Ed Breen and Andrew Liveris from the Friday December 10, 2015 Dow Dupont merger announcement.
Link to the full DowDuPont Merger Presentation
The company's leadership, Andrew Liveris from Dow and Ed Breen from DuPont, say the projected market value of the merger is $30 billion dollars, with about a billion dollars worth of growth synergies achieved by the merger itself. Market capitalization of the new DowDuPont is $130 billion dollars.
Most current shareholders will each own approximately 50 percent of the combined company.
Listen to the closing comments from Ed Breen and Andrew Liveris from the Friday December 10, 2015 Dow Dupont merger announcement.
Link to the full DowDuPont Merger Presentation
U of I Extension Food Safety Training for School Lunch Program
The Illinois State Board of Education has awarded four and half million dollars to University of Illinois Extension. The money will be used to help with the state’s school lunch program. The Board will use Extension to provide foodservice training and education to about 4000 school lunchrooms. Family & Consumer Sciences educators will create and deliver training on child nutrition standards and the cafeteria environment. The $4.5 million, three year effort starts in January with a monthly webinar series. A web training portal will follow in March. Schools interested in training can also contact Extension for onsite customized sessions and technical assistance says University of Illinois’ Jennifer McCaffrey.
CRP 30th Anniversary Sign-up in Progress
This is the 30th anniversary of the CRP. It’s a federal program that assists agricultural producers with the cost of restoring, enhancing and protecting certain grasses, shrubs and trees to improve water quality, prevent soil erosion and reduce loss of wildlife habitat.
As of September 2015, 24.2 million acres were enrolled in CRP. CRP also is protecting more than 170,000 stream miles with riparian forest and grass buffers. That’s enough to go around the world 7 times.
The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture calls CRP one of the most successful conservation programs in the nation’s history saying it has helped farmers, ranchers, conservationists, hunters, fishermen and other outdoor enthusiasts to set aside lands that otherwise might be put into production agriculture.
USDA, for its part, suggests when commodity prices are low, enrolling sensitive, low-quality and marginal lands in CRP can be especially attractive to farmers and ranchers, as it softens the economic hardship for landowners at the same time that it provides ecological benefits.
Contracts on 1.64 million acres of CRP are set to expire on Sept. 30, 2016. Producers with expiring contracts or producers with environmentally sensitive land are encouraged to evaluate their options under CRP. The current enrollment period closes in February.
Ethanol Production & 2016 Corn Consumption Prospects
Commodity traders are generally thinking last week’s EPA RFS rule making will cause more bushels of corn to be turned into ethanol next year. Todd Gleason reports University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Darrel Good is more doubtful.
Let’s start by building a corn for ethanol baseline to see why. The EIA, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, says U.S. production of fuel ethanol in 2014 totaled 14 billion 313 million gallons. That was about a billion gallons more than in 2013, and nearly 400 million gallons more than the record setting year of 2011. So, 14.313 billion gallons of ethanol were produced in 2014. During the first nine months of this year, writes Darrel Good on the Farm Doc Daily website, EIA shows production 3.6 percent larger than during the same 9 months last year. It appears October and November were on that same track, and while December looks to be off a bit, it should leave the yearly consumption at a whooping and record setting 14.745 billion gallons says U of I’s Good.
Quote Summary - Production at that level will require about 5.25 billion bushels of feedstock, mostly corn, for conventional ethanol production in 2015.
So the baseline is big, but let’s start back figuring for 2016 corn usage to make ethanol. U.S. EPA just released biofuels volumes for 2016. Those standards point to conventional ethanol consumption of 14.5 billion gallons for 2016. It’s about a 500 million gallon year-to-year increase says Good, however there is a second related factor. That factor is the blend wall, or how much gasoline is actually consumed in the United States .
Quote Summary - Based on EIA projections, consumption is expected to increase from 139.38 billion gallons in 2015 to 139.96 billion gallons in 2016. That expected increase of 580 million gallons follows an expected increase of 2.9 billion gallons in 2015. The conventional ethanol mandate of 14.5 billion gallons, then, reflects an expected small increase in the E–10 blend wall and a “push” to include larger quantities of higher ethanol blends (E–15 and E–85) in the domestic fuel supply. If the 2016 gasoline consumption forecast is correct, the E–10 blend wall will be 13.996 billion gallons.
Now, since some gasoline is consumed without ethanol and some with higher ethanol blends, the effective E–10 blend wall is actually thought to be 9.9 percent of consumption or 13.856 billion gallons. Here’s the back figure. Subtract from this number imported ethanol, add in a few additional E85 gallons, and total 2016 consumption of conventional ethanol says Darrel Good is not roughly 500 million gallons more than this year, but rather about the same as this year - though that 500 million gallon gap will still have to be filled.
Quote Summary - The difference between the RFS requirement of 14.5 billion gallons and the projected consumption of 13.903 billion gallons (597 million gallons) would have to be met with some combination of retirement of RINs stocks, additional quantities of E–85, or blending of additional quantities of advanced biofuels.
This outcome is very different from the initial reaction that an increase in the implied conventional ethanol requirement from the preliminary to final rule making for 2016 of 500 million gallons would result in a measurable increase in feedstock - corn - consumption.