Tracking Black Cut Worm Moth Flights in Illinois | with Kelly Estes
Todd Gleason talks with Illinois Natural History Survey Entomologist Kelly Estes about insect pests of corn in the state.
markets and weather for the farming world | Todd Gleason, Farm Broadcaster
Todd Gleason talks with Illinois Natural History Survey Entomologist Kelly Estes about insect pests of corn in the state.
The growing season has started and most corn farmers have already applied nitrogen. It is a very expensive plant food and getting the rate right may mean using a little less.
Here’s how the University of Illinois nitrogen recommendation used to work. It was formula equal to roughly one-point-two times the expected yield minus the nitrogen leftover from the previous crop. That “yield-goal-based system” recommends too much for today’s corn hybrids says University of Illinois Extension Agronomist Emerson Nafziger, “That yield-goal-based system flat-out doesn’t work anymore. The reason it doesn’t is that our yields have gone up a lot, and we are clearly showing that yields have gone up more than requirements for nitrogen have gone up.”
Nafziger believes there are two reasons for the change. First, he says the system always recommended more nitrogen than was really needed. The other is that hybrids have become much better at extracting what’s there; water and the nutrients that come with water. Nitrogen is the main one of those. Nafziger says, “Today we get higher yields and do not have to use the 1.2 pounds of nitrogen per bushel or what ever formulation people were using.”
ILLINOIS abandon the formula about ten years ago in a favor of a system used and promoted by Land Grant’s throughout the corn belt. It is called the N Rate Calculator and it actually brought the Illinois rates down by a few pounds for this year.
Nafziger says at current corn and nitrogen prices, guideline rates for corn following soybean are 154, 172, and 179 pounds of nitrogen per acre in northern, central, and southern Illinois, respectively. 200, 200, and 189 for corn after corn. Southern Illinois farmers will make note that their rate for corn after soybeans is higher than in either central or northern Illinois and lower than both of those for corn after corn.
Farmers have been a bit worried about getting into the field because of rains throughout the Midwest. It looks like those will clear out for the week, mostly, and even if they don’t, there isn’t much to worry about, yet. Todd Gleason has more on when the ag economist at the University of Illinois think late planting impacts the markets and yields.
Troy Cary & Lauran Widman (wihd-man) are working to create twelve-thousand 2017 University of Illinois soybean breeding program plots. Todd Gleason caught up with them on Tuesday morning and put together this look at some of the pre-planting season work.
Chris Hurt - This is basically a forecast for a breakeven year with all costs being covered, including labor costs and equity investors receiving a normal rate of return.
by Chris Hurt, Purdue University Extension farmdocDaily article
Hog prices are expected to increase in 2017 even with three percent more pork production. Prices will be supported by stronger demand because of a growing U.S. economy and by a robust eight percent growth in exports as projected by USDA. New packer capacity is also expected to contribute to stronger bids for hogs. Feed costs will be the lowest in a decade and total production costs are expected to be at decade lows.
The recently updated USDA inventory report found that the nation’s breeding herd was one percent larger than the herd of a year-ago. This continues a rebuilding of the herd that began in 2014 as feed prices began to move sharply lower and the industry began to recover from pig losses due to PED. The national breeding herd has increased by four percent since 2014. Notable expansions of the breeding herd in the past three years have occurred in Missouri 25 percent; Ohio 9 percent; Illinois 8 percent; and Indiana, Nebraska, and Oklahoma each up 4 percent. Farrowing intentions are up one percent for this spring and slightly below year previous levels for this coming summer.
Producers indicated to USDA that they had four percent more animals in the market herd, reflecting four percent higher farrowings last fall, a three percent increase in winter farrowings and a one percent increase in the number of pigs per litter. Given these numbers, pork supplies are expected to rise by five percent in April and May and then drop to a four percent increase for June through August. Three percent more pork can be expected for September through November of 2017 with supplies up one percent this coming winter compared to year-previous levels.
Live hog prices averaged about $46 last year with losses estimated at $11 per head. Prices are expected to be $3 to $4 higher this year. Live hog prices averaged about $50 per hundredweight in the first quarter of 2017. Prices for the second and third quarters are expected to average in the very low $50s. Prices will likely be seasonally lower in the fourth quarter and average in the mid-$40s. If so, prices would average near $49 for the year and be slightly under projected total costs of production with $1 of loss per head. This is basically a forecast for a breakeven year with all costs being covered, including labor costs and equity investors receiving a normal rate of return.
Current expectations are for feed prices to remain low in 2017, but with corn prices increasing into 2018. On a calendar year basis, U.S. corn prices received by farmers averaged $6.67 per bushel in 2012 (unweighted by marketings). Those prices fell to $3.48 per bushel in calendar 2016 and are expected to be only a few cents higher in calendar 2017. Current prospects are for corn to be $.20 to $.30 per bushel higher in calendar year 2018 due to sharp reductions in 2017 U.S. acreage.
Soybean meal averaged $478 per ton in 2014 (high-protein, Decatur, Illinois), but is expected to average only $315 per ton in 2017, the lowest calendar year price since 2010. Total feed costs per hundredweight are expected to be the lowest in a decade dating back to 2007.Total costs of production may reach 10-year lows. Estimated total costs of production reached $67 per live hundredweight in 2012 driven by high feed prices. For calendar year 2017 that may drop to $49.50, which is the lowest estimated total costs of production since 2007 and would represent 10-year lows.
What are the potential shadows for the industry this year? The first is that meat and poultry competition will be high. In addition to three percent more pork, beef production is expected to be up four percent and poultry production up two percent. There is simply a lot of competition for the consumers’ food dollars.
Secondly, the optimism for the U.S. economy that has been present in early 2017 could falter. This optimism is related to a stronger job market, low unemployment, and record seeking stock market indexes. The anticipated stimulus package of the new administration has likely been a contributor. Time will tell if Congress can agree on this legislation and move it from anticipation to reality. In addition, the FED is likely to continue a series of interest rate increases to slow growing inflation pressures.
Decade low feed cost is important reason pork producers are expected to almost cover all of their costs this year. Weather in the U.S. and in the Northern Hemisphere will be important in the final determination of yields and feed prices.
The industry needs to keep expansion of the breeding herd to near one percent each year. This one percent increase along with about one percent higher weaning rates means the industry can increase pork production about two percent a year. That is sufficient to cover a one percent growth in domestic population and about one percent annual growth needed to expand exports. Growth of the breeding herd at more than one percent could shift the industry back into losses.
Figure 1. Planting date responses over 22 corn and 26 soybean site-years in Illinois. |
May corn futures’ prices tumbled to the lowest price level since December during the week ending March 24. Large crop estimates from around the world placed downward pressure on the corn market despite some positive domestic consumption numbers in exports and corn used for ethanol. Still, Todd Hubbs from the University of Illinois is hopeful there could be some support left in the corn market over time.
Kim Kidwell, Dean of the College of ACES - University of Illinois
Extension personnel facilitate the translation of many of the fantastic discoveries made at land-grant universities to people around the world. Oftentimes, this is the only way that this valuable information reaches people so they can make good decisions that improve the qualities of their lives. Kim Kidwell, Dean of the University of Illinois College of ACES, believes Extension embodies the essence of the land-grant mission because this is where transformation happens. She discusses, with Todd Gleason, how the future of Extension in the state of Illinois can provide the basis through which the discovery process can continue to help change people’s lives.
Read more from College of ACES Dean Kim Kidwell’s blog post here.
USDA, at the end of this month, will let us know how much of the nation’s soybean crop there is left in the bin. It “should” be a fairly uneventful number.
by Todd Hubbs
read full farmdocDaily article
On March 31, the USDA will release the quarterly Grain Stocks report, with estimates of crop inventories as of March 1, and the annual Prospective Plantings report. For soybeans, the stocks estimate is typically overshadowed by the estimate of planting intentions. Usually, the quarterly stocks estimates for corn garners more interest because these reports reveal the pace of feed and residual use which is a large component of total corn consumption. The March 1 soybean stocks estimate this year may not provide much new information despite recent growth in marketing year ending stocks and concerns about the size of the South American crop… continue reading the full article by clicking here.
Generally, Todd Hubbs says it is pretty easy to figure out how many soybeans have been consumed. There is a regular reporting system for how many bushels are exported and one for how many are crushed. That second report, the crush, calculates how many soybeans are crushed in the United States into its two components. These are soybean meal and soybean oil. Hubbs, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, says the reports make it easy enough to calculate disappearance, consumption, usage, whatever you want to call, and consequently come up with a number that approximates how many bushels are left to use. Hubbs’ March 1 grain stocks figure for soybeans is 1.68 billion bushels. Here’s the math he used to get there.
Quote Summary - Exports for the first quarter were 932 million bushels. For the second quarter, I have them pegged at about 721 million bushels. I have the second quarter crush at 491 million bushels. This brings the total crush for the first half of the marketing year to 976 million bushels. We’ve been crushing a really good rate, but we have a lot of soybeans. So, with USDA raising ending stocks to 435 million, if that number holds and we don’t drive those numbers down, and if the March 1 stocks number is 1.68 billion, it means the last half of the marketing year we are going to have to consume about 1.23 billion bushels.
Hubbs thinks that is a reasonable number. It depends, though, he says mostly on what happens in the export market through August.
There has been much debate and much written about the likely costs and benefits of including ethanol in the domestic gasoline supply. Costs and benefits fall into two major categories–environmental and economic (e.g., Stock, 2015). One economic consideration is the potential impact on domestic gasoline prices from augmenting the gasoline supply with biofuels. A second economic consideration, and one that has received the most attention, is the cost of ethanol relative to petroleum-based fuel. What has been missing from the analysis of the value of ethanol in the gasoline blend is an estimate of the net value of ethanol based on: i) an energy penalty relative to gasoline; and ii) an octane premium based on the lower price of ethanol relative to petroleum sources of octane.
This farmdocDaily article provides an analysis of that net value since January 2007.