June 17 | USDA NASS Weekly Crop Progress Report

Statistical Methodology
via USDA NASS

Weekly Crop Progress Report Survey Procedures: Crop progress and condition estimates are based on survey data collected each week from early April through the end of November. The non-probability crop progress and condition surveys include input from approximately 4,000 respondents whose occupations provide them opportunities to make visual observations and frequently bring them in contact with farmers in their counties. Based on standard definitions, these respondents subjectively estimate the progress of crops through various stages of development, as well as the progress of producer activities. They also provide subjective evaluations of crop conditions.

Most respondents complete their questionnaires on Friday or early Monday morning and submit them to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Field Offices in their States by mail, telephone, fax, e-mail, or through a secured internet website. A small number of reports are completed on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Regardless of when questionnaires are completed, respondents are asked to report for the entire week ending on Sunday. For reports submitted prior to the Sunday reference date, a degree of uncertainty is introduced by projections for weekend changes in progress and condition. By the end of the 2015 season, over 90 percent of the data were being submitted through the internet website. As a result, the majority of all data are submitted on Monday morning, significantly reducing projection uncertainty.

Respondents are sent written reporting instructions at the beginning of each season and are contacted periodically to ensure proper reporting. Terms and definitions of crop stages and condition categories used as reporting guidelines are available on the NASS website at www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/National_Crop_Progress.

Estimating Procedures: Reported data are reviewed for reasonableness and consistency by comparing with data reported the previous week and data reported in surrounding counties for the current week. Field Offices summarize the reported data to district and State levels, weighting each county’s reported data by NASS county acreage estimates. Summarized indications are compared with previous week estimates, and progress items are compared with earlier stages of development and historical averages to ensure reasonableness. Weather events and respondent comments are also taken into consideration. State estimates are submitted to the Agricultural Statistics Board (ASB) along with supporting comments, where they are compared with surrounding States and compiled into a National level summary by weighting each State by its acreage estimates.

Revision Policy: Progress and condition estimates in the Crop Progress report are released after 4:00 pm ET on the first business day of the week. These estimates are subject to revision the following week.

Agronomy Day on the South Farms August 18, 2016

URBANA, Ill. – Have questions about pest resistance or curious about the use of drones in agriculture? Plan to hear more on these and other topics related to crop sciences at the 59th annual Agronomy Day at the University of Illinois on August 18.

Field tour topics and speakers for Agronomy Day 2016 were recently announced. Topics include:

TOUR A
Cataloging the weapons arsenal of the Fusarium head blight pathogen
Genetic resistance for northern leaf blight and Goss’ wilt in corn
Stripe rust and scab resistance in wheat
Bt resistance in corn rootworm beetles Nematodes: How does the worm turn?

TOUR B
Nitrogen management: Balancing profitability with sustainability
Economics of nutrient management
Land values
Six weed management predictions to keep you up at night
Investigating low crop emergence in edamame

TOUR C
The show must go on: Balancing water use under continuously changing environmental conditions
Cover crops for soybean and corn rotation
Soybean planting date and variety maturity
Managing soybeans for high yields Drone information and demonstration

TOUR D
*Offered at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. (tentative) with limited availability, as attendees will be transported offsite to SoyFACE. Attendees will need to sign up in advance at the registration table. Tours will last one hour.

What is SoyFACE?
Improving maize tolerance in air pollution CO2
Improving drought tolerance and water use efficiency in C4 crops

For a full list of this year’s speakers and topics, visit http://agronomyday.cropsci.illinois.edu/.

Agronomy Day attracts more than 1,000 people each year seeking the latest information on technology and techniques to improve food and fuel production. This year, agronomy day will be held in a new location at 4202 South 1st Street in Savoy, Illinois. For more information on speakers, displays, and location, join Agronomy Day 2016 on Facebook or visit the Agronomy Day website.

National GMO Labeling Bill in Motion

The U.S. Senate’s agricultural committee has reached a food labeling bill agreement that could set aside the state of Vermont’s GMO law. Ranking members Pat Roberts of Kansas, a Republican, and Debbie Stabenaw, a Michigan Democrat, announced a digital codes compromise. If the full Senate and the House pass the legislation food packages containing a narrowly defined set of genetically engineered ingredients would include a digital disclosure code or an on package symbol or language that the Agriculture Department would approve. The code, which could be scanned by a smartphone, would be accompanied by the sentence, “Scan here for more food information”.

The compromise narrowly defines genetically modified for the purposes of food labels. Only ingredients derived from GMO’s made by transferring genes from one organism to another would require labeling. Foods made with ingredients where the genetic code is edited - a deleted or duplicated gene for example - would not require the GMO notifications.

COMMENTARY: Robert's Rules of Order

What risks are there to organizing a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives?

• The House has parliamentary rules. Have these been violated? http://www.house.gov/content/learn/ http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/house-rules.pdf
• "The makeup of the Rules Committee has traditionally been weighted in favor of the majority party, and has been in its current configuration of 9 majority and 4 minority members since the late 1970s.” - from the House.gov website

Will the Ethics Committee be called to action?

• see Code of Conduct items 1 and 2 - http://ethics.house.gov/publication/code-official-conduct

Honestly, what happened on the floor of the House in my opinion is deplorable. It breaks down the rules of debate that are set up for just reasons to allow the majority (whichever party or however it is comprised) to rule. The rules allow debate to be orderly, and for the minority opinion to be heard. It does not require a vote on that opinion. This works for all parties/individuals and I am fearful what happened here will have far reaching and ill affects.
Robert’s Rules of Oder were devised, originally, from the rules of the House of Representatives. The House, therefore, has a long and storied history of orderly debate: http://www.rulesonline.com

The foundations of democracy have been shaken by this action.

Soybean Stocks, Acreage, and Weather

The price of soybeans has rallied so much this season that one agricultural economist is doubtful there is much additional upside potential.

New crop soybeans are worth about two-and-half dollars more today than back in February when farmers purchased insurance to cover the price risk inherent in farming. The rise has to do with a short crop from South America, above average temperatures in the United States, and only scattered rainfall in the mid-section of the nation. Farmers can now sell beans for about $11 a bushel for fall delivery, and that doesn’t seem too bad to University of Illinois agricultural economist Darrel Good.

Quote Summary - While there is a potential for prices to move even higher with stressful summer weather, that potential may be less than the potential for corn, depending on the magnitude of planted acres, since soybean prices have already experienced a sharp rally and soybean yields are less sensitive to summer weather than are corn yields.

The path soybeans have taken to higher prices is pretty clear. The July contract at the CME Group in Chicago is up 25% since April 1, 2016. The rally came as the market came to grips with a 200 million bushel reduction in the estimated size of the combined Argentine and Brazilian soybean crops and the resulting surge in export demand for U.S. soybeans. The next stop on this price train forward is the end of month reports from the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA will release the Acreage and Grain Stocks reports June 30th. Darrel Good calculates the expected June 1 Grain Stocks for soybeans near 842 million bushels.

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Soybean Inventory Estimate
(in billion bushels)

1.531 March 1, 2016 Inventory
+ .006 Imports
- .173 Exports
- .487 Crush
- .035 Feed & Residual
–
0.842 June 1, 2016 Inventory

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He believes there is room for a surprise in the Acreage Report. USDA’s survey of farmers in March put expectations at 82.236 million acres. This number could be higher for a couple of reasons. The consensus seems to be that the June Acreage report will reveal that acreage exceeded intentions due to some switching of intended corn acreage to soybeans as the result of the increase in soybean prices relative to corn prices since March and the delayed corn planting in parts of the eastern Corn Belt.

Soybean acreage may also exceed intentions, writes Darrel Good on the FarmDocDaily website, as a result of total acreage of spring planted crops exceeding intentions reported in March.

Fungicide Applications Improve Corn Silage Feed Efficiency

June is National Dairy Month

Spraying a fungicide on corn in the Midwest has always been a 50/50 proposition related to cost. Half of the time it bumps yield by a couple of bushels and this can sometimes be enough to cover the cost. However, if that corn is going into silage, some new work from the University of Illinois says the improvement in feed efficiency for dairy cattle can pay for the fungicide not just once, but maybe twice.

Purdue University & CME Group Ag Barometer

Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture and the derivatives marketplace CME Group are partnering to produce the Purdue/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer, a monthly nationwide measure of the health of the U.S. agricultural economy.

The introduction of this new economic indicator underscores the importance of the agricultural economy and its participants - food producers and agribusinesses - to the overall U.S. and global economies, Purdue and CME Group said Tuesday (May 3) in announcing the partnership.

“Agriculture is a critical component of the global economy and has been the cornerstone of CME Group’s business for nearly 170 years,” said CME Group Executive Chairman and President Terry Duffy. “By providing financial tools to help producers and agribusiness participants manage the risks they face, they are better able to focus on what they do best - feeding the world. We believe this collaboration with Purdue University to create the Purdue/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer will provide an essential resource for monitoring the health of the food industry and vital insight into the global economy.”

Purdue President Mitch Daniels said, “Purdue’s College of Agriculture has a long tradition of pushing us toward better food security, safety and sustainability with its cutting-edge research. We can imagine no better partner than CME Group to help us analyze and report the real-time economic health of U.S. agriculture, on which literally every citizen and the rest of the economy depends.”

Each month, the Ag Economy Barometer will provide a sense of the agricultural economy’s health with an index value. Results to calculate the index are obtained through a survey of 400 large agricultural producers on economic sentiment. In addition, Purdue will bring its research and agricultural economics expertise to measure producers’ expectations of key farm economy drivers such as farm profitability; farmland prices; capital expenditures; row crop, livestock and dairy prices; and seasonal drivers such as seed, fertilizer and feed ingredient prices.

The barometer provides a value for each month that is relative to the base period, which is the winter and spring months of 2015 and 2016, explained Jim Mintert, director of the Center for Commercial Agriculture, professor of agricultural economics and the barometer’s principal investigator. A score of 100 would mean that the sentiment is unchanged from the base period values. Higher than 100 means sentiment improved from that period, whereas lower values would indicate sentiment declined.

Quarterly, the index will be accompanied by a webinar and in-depth thought leader survey. The 100 agricultural thought leaders surveyed include agricultural lenders, business professionals, academics, consultants and commodity association representatives. This survey is separate from the results of the producer survey but serves as a supplement to the barometer.

“The barometer is the only ongoing monthly measure of the health of the agricultural economy,” Mintert said. “Also unique is that the index is calculated based on producer sentiments about both current conditions and future expectations.”

April survey results

The agricultural sentiment of U.S. producers increased to 106 in April 2016, which was an improvement in producer sentiment compared to the base period of October 2015 through March 2016. The increase was driven in part by strengthening corn, soybean and wheat prices. After months of trending lower and a sharp drop in corn prices following the USDA’s March Prospective Plantings report, crop prices moved up during April. In addition, general weather conditions across the Plains and Midwest were favorable for crop development and planting and likely contributed to the improved sentiment.

“While the most recent data show an uptick in producers’ sentiment, it is important to keep the situation in perspective,” said David Widmar, senior research associate for the Center for Commercial Agriculture and lead researcher on the Ag Economy Barometer. “Overall, the general agricultural outlook is still difficult. A strong majority of respondents, from both the producer and quarterly Agricultural Thought Leaders survey, reported expectations of the next 12 months being ‘bad times’ financially across the agricultural sector.”

A website with more information on the Ag Economy Barometer is at www.purdue.edu/agbarometer.

Corn Prices to Reflect Summer Wx & Demand Strength

Summer has arrived and so has the critical three month period in which the nation’s food supply will be established. The commodity markets will follow weather conditions, crop ratings, and weather forecasts in order to form yield expectations. Todd Gleason reports the starting place is typically to assume a normal growing season.

University of Illinois Weed Science Field Research Tour

The Extension weed scientists on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana-Champaign have scheduled their annual field day. The Weed Science tour is set for Wednesday June 29th says Aaron Hager.

It’ll be at the South Farms and will begin roughly between 7:30 and 8:00 o’clock in the morning. It will be very similar in terms of format to what we’ve done before. We’ll all gather around the South Farms at the Seed House for a few introductory remarks and comments, and then everybody will get back into their vehicles and we’ll car pool across Windsor Road and look at some of the research plots on the Animal Sciences tracts.

Again, the 2016 University of Illinois Weed Science Field Day is Wednesday, June 29th at the University of Illinois Crop Sciences Research and Education Center, the South Farms, located just to the east of the State Farm Center (Assembly Hall).

Coffee and refreshments will be available under the shade trees near the Seed House beginning at 8:00 a.m. Cost for the Urbana weed science field tour is $10. The event will conclude around noon with a catered lunch.

The tour will provide ample opportunity to look at research plots and interact with weed science faculty, staff, and graduate students. Participants can compare their favorite corn and soybean herbicide programs to other commercial programs and get an early look at a few new products that soon will be on the market.

Will Summer Pricing Opportunities Materialize for Corn & Soybeans

The very low price of corn and soybeans, and predictions for even lower prices later in the year, has farmers worried. They’re wondering, even hopeful, if a summer weather rally could offer up a pricing opportunity. Darrel Good tries to answer this question in the May 23rd Weekly Outlook on the FarmDocDaily website.

Quote Summary - If a summer price rally does occur, producers will likely want to aggressively price the 2016 crop. In addition, history suggests that a weather market would also result in opportunities for pricing 2017 crops and beyond. A weather market would likely result in smaller price increases for those crops than for the 2015 and 2106 crops, similar to the recent price pattern. From the close on March 31 to the close on May 20, July 2016 corn futures gained almost $0.39, while December 2016 and December 2017 futures gained $0.31 and $0.24, respectively. From the close on March 1, July 2016 soybean futures gained $2.10, while November 2016 and November 2017 futures gained $1.79 and $0.88, respectively. Still, prices for those deferred crops could move to levels reflecting positive returns for most producers. How aggressively to price multiple crops depends on the magnitude of the price rally, should it occur.

Reasons to Price Soybeans Now …first, soybean acreage is likely to exceed intentions so that production could still be large even with a modest shortfall in yields. Second, soybean yields may be less vulnerable to stressful summer weather than corn yields. Third, soybean prices have increased more than corn prices in recent weeks and are now at a relatively high level compared to corn prices. Fourth, November 2016 soybean futures are now trading near $10.40, above the spring price guarantee of $9.73 for crop revenue insurance. Fifth, with trend yields, current new crop soybean prices are high enough to generate positive returns to owner -operators, those with crop share rents, and those with modest cash rents.

Reasons to Wait on Corn …acreage may be less than intentions, yields are more vulnerable to adverse summer weather, recent price strength has been modest, and December 2016 futures are currently trading only modestly above the spring price guarantee of $3.86 for crop revenue insurance. While waiting for a price that offers a positive return has some risk, the risk for corn seems limited over the next several weeks

$4.20 Corn Needed to Stabilize Grain Farm Income

Grain farmers throughout the Midwest are suffering through a third straight year of losses and prices don’t look to go high enough, yet, to stabilize net incomes. A University of Illinois study suggests the cash price of corn needs to be $4.20 a bushel to make that happen.

Marestail Control Prior to Planting

link to article online

Farmers in Illinois, other states too, are struggling to control glyphosate resistant weeds. Marestail can be one of the most challenging under no-till conditions prior to planting soybeans. More often than not farmers are using a tank mix of glyphosate and 2,4-D (two-four-dee). Sometimes the problem is that the weed is already too big to control, at others says University of Illinois Extension Weed Scientist Aaron Hager is its just that the 2,4-D isn’t doing the job any better than the glyphosate.

Quote Summary - Well, there are some alternatives that can be used for control of mares tail in a burn down scenario. A product called Sharpen could be included with glyphosate/2,4-D to try to increase the efficacy on the marestail and if that is the case be sure to include a methylated seed oil with any application that has Sharpen with it. Or alternatively you could switch completely over to something like a glufosinate product, like a Liberty or Interline containing product or something like Gramoxone. Either of those will typically perform better when used in combination with metribuzin and probably 2,4-D in the tank as well.

Tillage is another option, however, Hager says to delay it until field conditions are suitable and be sure to till deep enough to completely uproot all existing vegetation.

Illini Summer Academy

REGISTER NOW - Experience Ag Business on U of I Campus
June 26–29 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Cost: $220. Cost supported by a gift from DuPont/Pioneer.

Join us in the wonderful world of agribusiness! Create a marketing plan for a product, trade commodities and stocks and compete with others, follow the food supply chain around the world, and see agribusinesses firsthand in action. Take a step into the business world in food and agriculture, and find out more about how you can become a part of it.

Career Opportunities: Agronomist, Farm Appraiser, Agricultural Policy Analyst, Farm Manager, Crop Producer, Grain & Livestock Buyer, Market Analyst, Financier, Quality Controller, Marketing Head, Ag Science Teacher or Professor

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REGISTER NOW - Experience Crop Sciences on U of I Campus
June 26–29 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Cost: $205. Cost supported by a gift from DuPont/Pioneer. No repeat attendees from 2015.

Plant Science is an exciting field with many career opportunities where knowledge about plants, insects, biology, agriculture, genetics, plant pathology, horticulture and other topics are used to improve plants and their products and enhance agricultural production. Join this academy to explore plant biotechnology; discover how to identify insects, plant diseases and noxious weeds; investigate climate change and the effects on crops; learn what makes peppers hot; understand how a hydroponics system works; go on field trips and more!

Career Opportunities: Plant scientist, Agronomist or Crop Scientist, Turf Manager, Farm Manager, Food Scientist, Weed Scientist, Entomologist, Nursery and Garden Specialist, Researcher Plant Biotechnology & Molecular Biology, Sustainable Food & Production, Agro Ecology, Crop Agribusiness, Plant Protection

Summer Weather, El Niño, & Corn Yields

The agricultural economists at the land grant university in Illinois have gone through 56 years of weather data to see if there is any connection between the current El Niño event and trend yields for corn.



The trend yield for corn has been going up 1.8 bushels per yer for about 50 years say the number crunchers from the University of Illinois. It means, under normal weather conditions with a little adjustment upward, this year’s corn crop should average 166.2 bushels to the acre nationwide.



The 166.2 is the norm, but it lives within a range that would be indicative of really good years like 2004 and really bad years like 2012 says U of I’s Scott Irwin, “Now what we want to ask is if we should skew our expectations of this risk given this outside factor that doesn’t happen every year that we call El Niño”.

ILLINOIS’ research suggests the answer to this question is a qualified yes. The qualification is that the El Niño event is measured strictly as an effect of water temperature in the Pacific Ocean near the equator and that only the most extreme of these events, those a full degree or more centigrade above the norm for three months running, would be considered strong enough to regularly have a real measurable impact on U.S. crops.

The warmest one, to date, was 1997/98 and it peaked at 2.3 degrees centigrade above normal. If you take the same period and you estimate trend yields going back to 1960 there were 11 El Niño episodes at least one centigrade degree above normal. The Illinois agricultural economists filtered this data so these spikes had to occur in what they called the pre-season periods for corn production. This would be from September to March prior to the crop year. It is exactly what has happened this year and the spike is more than two degrees centigrade. It’s a really big one.

Irwin - What we find is, in these big spiking El Niños that occur in the pre-season period, that corn on average is about 4 to 5 bushels to the acre below trend.

Having said that, Irwin points to a large range of occurrences from 11 bushels above trend in 1992 to 23 bushels below trend in 1982. 1988 and 2012, the two worst drought years, also count under this construct.



The model used very reliably predicts summer heat waves, however, it is not so great at determining the amount of rainfall. Recall the reference Irwin made to the 1997/98 pre-season El Niño, the largest on record, similar to this year. The national corn yield was 3 bushels to the acre above trend. The heat wave came, it was just very last in August and early September after the corn crop had been made.

Falling Cattle Prices, Where Is the Bottom

The price of cattle has been on a downward spiral for months and ranchers and farmers are wondering when it’ll hit bottom. Todd Gleason has more on the coming prospects for the price of beef.

Wheat Quality Council 2016 Kansas Wheat Tour

Crop scouts moved through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska the first full week of May to check on the condition of the hard red winter wheat crop (HRW). They found it to be a bin buster in the making averaging 48.6 bushels to the acre.

Farm Economy Beginning to Show Signs of Stress

This is the third year of a financial crunch on the farm. It follows on the heels of a series of tremendous seasons since 2006. The extra money, from then, is now starting to run out.

The financial stress in the ag sector may really begin to show this fall if low commodity prices persist says the Director of the TIAA CREF Center for Farmland Research on the Univeristy of Illinois campus, Bruce Sherrick.

Quote Summary - It is already affecting cash rents and land prices some. However, on a percentage basis not as much as the current cash prices (would suggest) for delivery within this year at least.

Sherrick says a a couple of things have happened which explain this buffering. The last several years have been really quite good for agricultural incomes. So, farmers have pretty strong balance sheets. It is easier to weather a downturn, says Sherrick, after a few good years, than a bad year after a few bad years, “We are seeing, clearly, working capital crunches beginning to hit people. This is the first year that is material, and lenders are seeing and uptick in volume. As we’ve adjusted to more normal stocks, we are into a period were we think, ”this might be the last year were people can really just stand for what’s going on without making some major changes in how they manage cash rents, or inputs, or financial structures".

This does not mean the price of farm land will plummet. Long term interest rates are very, very low and the rate of turnover in farmland is supper small.

Money is cheap and farmland for sale is scarce.

Quote Summary - If you look at the number of acres that sell, maybe around 2% transfer per year within the agriculturally intense states. Only half of that moves outside of a family. The market is thin, and this helps buffer or slow down changes in farmland values because of changes in short term farm income. The low interest rates help people pay for a longterm investment with a stable cash return that can be rented for perhaps 3% of its value on a cash basis.

Farm land doesn’t look like such a dire situation, then, when you step back from it. It also has shown, very reliably says Bruce Sherrick, a positive correlation with inflation. Even if the price of commodities stay relatively low, it may be that the price of farmland, as an owned asset, will help farms stay afloat.

Ukraine Aiming to be World's #2 Ag Exporter

APK-Inform reports Ukraine to take the second position for agricultural products exports, following the USA.

Ukraine has rather good prospects for strengthening the positions of domestic agricultural commodities on the world market, declared the Verkhovna Rada deputy, President of Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, Leonid Kozachenko.

According to him, in order to hold up its status of agrarian superstate, Ukraine has to invest at least 70 bln USD in the agricultural industry, and enlarge the production volumes of foodstuffs.

Ukraine will consume nearly 20% of the produced commodities, and export the remaining volumes, which will significantly replenish the state budget. Ukraine requires nearly 10 years of consolidated and stable work for development of effective public policy, deregulation and fight against corruption, to achieve the reporting objective. Only in such case, in the future Ukraine can confidently reach the second position following the USA by exports of agricultural products, said the President of Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation.

National New Era Cash Price Midpoints for Corn & Soybeans

The ag economists at the University of Illinois have updated their work predicting the “New Era” long range cash prices for corn and soybeans.

Seven years ago Darrel Good and University of Illinois colleague Scott Irwin predicted the average cash price for central Illinois corn and soybeans would be $4.60 and $11.20. It started with a simple idea. The last time the price of corn and soybeans had really changed was during the 1972/73 crop marketing year says Scott Irwin.

Quote Summary - Right. The first era was a $1.28, the second era was $2.36. The price jumped about 90%. We took that as our starting point and then realized this magnitude of jump made some sense given the market and other modeling exercises. We decided it seemed a reasonable estimate and to go with them. The equivalent numbers now are $4.35 on corn and $10.44 on soybeans.

As it turns out, those are pretty close to the actual national average monthly cash price over the first eight years of the new era. Corn has averaged $4.39 and soybeans $10.61. The fundamental question today, says Irwin, is “are these numbers still good or was the ”new era“ a temporary uptick in the market”. He is confident the numbers are solid, but cautions it was a one time move up from the old era. Pragmatically he means farmers cannot market their crop today the way they did as the move was happening.

Quote Summary - And you were rewarded for waiting, almost all the time, to do your marketing as that curve shifting occurred. I think we see the kind of opportunities in the grain markets that might be presented as the more traditional short-crop long-market-tail. If you do get that situation emerging… say corn prices, and I am not forecasting this… but let’s say there is a substantial production problem in the U.S. and corn rallied to $5.00. We wouldn’t expect that to last a long time.

There would be a quick and decisive production response in reaction to such a move in the market. The higher price then, would need to be rewarded sooner rather than later. The current rally in soybeans could be indicating just such a move, however, it would be based on poor weather conditions in South America rather than in the United States.

Quote Summary - Warning lights are flashing, that there may be opportunity ahead. Be prepared with a marketing plan, where you have some really well thought through pricing targets for your operation and be ready to execute when those opportunities arise.

You may read about the new era cash prices Scott Irwin and Darrel Good are projecting on the Farm Doc Daily website. The address is www.farmdocdaily.illinois.edu.

4-H Robotics Competition @ ILLINOIS

Did you know 4-H, that’s the world’s largest youth organization, is into robots. It is, and so are kids. Todd Gleason has more from an amazing robotics competition held in mid-April on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, Illinois.