March 2, 2023

A five-minute summary of AAI, regulation, and industry activities for members of the largest state agribusiness association in the nation.

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SHOWCASE HIGHLIGHTS

Environmental Leader Awards

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) recognized outstanding individuals and businesses for their environmental leadership in the ag community during the Wednesday breakfast. Susan Kozak, Division Director Soil Conservation & Water Quality, presented the awards on behalf of IDALS.

Award recipients (clockwise from left to right):

• The Waterhouse Family, Waterhouse Construction
• Chase and Jess Weller, Weller Seed Supply
• Mollie Aronowitz, Peoples Company
• Paul Mausser, Agri-Partners Farm Management 

Next Showcase - February 2024

We look forward to seeing everyone next year, in February of 2024, for an even better and more engaging event.

• True North Companies
• Phosphorlutions

• Twin State, Inc.

March 3

Membership Committee Meeting

3:00 PM | AAI Main Office Board Room

March 21

Agronomy Committee & Environment Committee

Joint Meeting

10:00 AM | AAI Main Office Board Room

March 28 & 29

Grain Grading Workshops

Ziegler CAT - Altoona, Iowa

Click Here to Register Online

April 6

AAI Board of Directors Meeting

10:00 AM | AAI Main Office Board Room

Click a Headline - Watch the Report

• Ethanol savings | Recommendations for the farm bill

• Food costs at home | A forum looks at the Ukrainian grain initiative

• Iowa cattle and crop reports

• More processing dollars | The ag export forecast is down

Watch Any Time or View the Archives:

AGRIBIZ.ORG/Report

The future health of the U.S. agri-food sector depends crucially on maintaining robust investments in agricultural research by both the public and private sectors. Public agricultural research and development (R&D), primarily funded by the federal government, provides an important complement to R&D funded by private businesses, driving basic scientific and technological innovations that raise U.S. agricultural productivity.

For the most part, private firms specialize in fewer research topics, focusing on areas with established product markets, such as major commodity crops, agricultural inputs like crop seed and chemicals, farm machinery, and veterinary pharmaceuticals. On the other hand, public institutions such as land-grant universities invest in a broader portfolio of research topics. Often, public-sector investments support early stage discoveries that can later be developed by the private sector, or address issues that benefit our food system and society broadly, such as research on food safety, animal health, or environmental issues. In addition, public sector research often focuses on crops that have smaller planted acreage in the U.S. but still play vital roles in our food supply chain, such as wheat, rice, and specialty crops.

Agricultural research delivers impressive returns on public investment – one recent USDA study showed $20 in benefits to the U.S. economy for every $1 spent. In spite of this, U.S. public funding for agricultural R&D has fallen off, declining by about one-third in inflation-adjusted terms since 2002, according to a December 2022 article published by USDA’s Economic Research Service.

To address this decline, Congress established the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) in the 2014 Farm Bill, aimed at leveraging public and private resources to generate more innovation and boost the U.S. agricultural economy. Since it was launched, FFAR has attracted $1.40 in non-federal funding, particularly from the private sector, for every $1 of public investment. Additional federal funding for FFAR will be up for consideration in the 2023 Farm Bill. Successful models like this deserve more support.

Farm Journal Foundation and the American Farm Bureau Federation recently commissioned a research paper about the role of public funding for agricultural research in driving innovation. To find out more, please read the report or visit www.farmjournalfoundation.org. 

The annual summary recording nationwide grain dust bin explosions reported nine incidents in 2022. This compares to seven reported incidents in 2021 and a 10-year average of 7.8 explosions annually.

Kingsly Ambrose, Purdue University professor of agricultural and biological engineering and report author, said that despite the increase in explosions from the previous year and 18 total injuries this year, no fatalities were reported.

The explosions occurred in one ethanol plant, two feed mills, two grain elevators, two rice mills and two grain processing plants. The probable ignition sources were identified in three cases as a fire and one incidence as welding, while five cases were from unknown sources. Fuel sources for all nine explosions were identified as grain dust.

The dust explosions occurred in seven different states, with two each occurring in Arkansas and Louisiana, and one each in New Mexico, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio.

"Often, five of the conditions needed for a grain dust explosion to occur are present in most grain feed, milling and processing facilities," Ambrose said. "These conditions include dust, dispersed dust, confined space and oxygen. The presence of the fifth factor, an ignition source such as overheated bearing or mechanical friction, could lead to an explosion."



[...] Read Full Story

The U.S. may soon have a new wild pig problem. Until now, the invasive species has largely proliferated in warm places like the southeast, Texas, and California. But in recent years, invasive pigs have started thriving in Canada and may spread into North Dakota, Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota.

According to Dr. Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, Canada’s wild pig problem is relatively new. “The U.S. has a 400-plus year history with invasive wild pigs, but we didn’t have any here until the early 1980s,” he says. “There was a big push to diversify agriculture with species like wild boards and ostriches. Wild boars were brought in from Europe to be raised on farms across Canada.”

Most of those pigs were kept on meat farms, but some were used on high-fence hunting preserves. Many farmers and ranchers soon crossbred the wild boars with domestic pigs. According to Brook, the hybridization resulted in bigger “super pigs” that could survive in cold climates. “For surviving in cold winters, one of the rules of ecology is: the bigger the better,” he says. “Larger body animals survive the cold better and have better reproduction in those conditions.”

In the early 2000s, the market for farmed boars dropped out in Canada. Some escaped from their enclosures and others were let free without anyone to sell them to. In less than 20 years, the wild—or feral—population exploded, in part due to the species’ extraordinarily high reproductive rate. Wild boars now roam approximately 620,000 square miles in Canada, primarily in the Prairie Provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta.

“That they can survive in such a cold climate is one of the big surprises of this issue. The Prairie Provinces are where we have the coldest winters in Canada except for the very far north,” says Brook. “One of the things they do to survive is tunnel under the snow. They go into a cattail marsh and channel into the soft snow and cut nests in the cattails. If you go early in the morning on a cold day, you can actually see steam pouring out the top of the nests.”

[...] Read Full Story

A Midwestern Governor who led the effort on a year-round E15 waiver says she’ll keep fighting to get the rule finalized before this summer. 

Kim Reynolds of Iowa says while EPA’s proposed rule to lift summertime restrictions on E15 sales is welcome, delaying implementation until April 2024 is unacceptable and disappointing.

“But hardly surprising, and we won’t accept it without a fight.”

Reynolds is requesting another emergency waiver to allow E15 sales this summer while at the same time asking the courts to intervene and require the administration to grant the governors’ request immediately.

“And I’ve also asked for a meeting with President Biden to discuss the critical timeliness of the waiver.”

The Renewable Fuels Association presented Reynolds an industry award Thursday morning at the National Ethanol Conference in Orlando.

[...] Read Full Story

One of Kraft Heinz’s most profitable brands, Lunchables, is signing a deal with grades K-12 schools across the country — potentially launching Big Cheese, Ham, and Crackers into unknown heights.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Kraft Heinz executive vice president, announced the deal at the annual Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) meeting on Feb. 21. Two types of Lunchables with “improved nutrition” will be served in grades K-12 schools as soon as this fall.

A Kraft-Heinz spokesperson declined to provide more details. The company will release more information about this program in the next month. 

The effort is likely intriguing to any of the folks who have consumed the billions of Lunchables packages sold by Kraft Heinz since they were introduced in 1988. I — or more accurately, my parents — purchased untold units of Lunchables because I was for some reason obsessed with eating the pepperoni pizza variety through much of my childhood. My organs have come out mostly unscathed. 

For the uninitiated, here is what a Lunchables consists of:

• Some sort of main dish that you make yourself, like stacking rectangles of ham and cheese on a circular cracker or squeezing a red pizza sauce on a disc of bread and adding cheese and pepperoni.
• A drink, like bottled water, Capri-Sun, or a mysterious fizzy drink called “Cola.”
• Dessert, like a wee Crunch bar.

Here is my ode to Lunchables, the most MBA-friendly product to ever exist, with a significant footnote for the nutritionally suspicious element within. Ultimately, as schools become more strapped for cash, we will see more of these deals come about — and it’s a spooky indicator for our country’s health outlook. 

What I did not admire as a child eating Maxed Out Deep Dish Pizza Lunchables is the logistics and margin-slashing wonder within. (In addition to not forcing me to eat kale salad for lunch every day as a child, my parents did not buy me a subscription to Harvard Business Review.) But fear not! I learned a bit more about the economics behind Lunchables when I read “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us” by investigative reporter Michael Moss. 

[...] Read Full Story

THE AGRIBUSINESS REPORT

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