October 12, 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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• Dentons Davis Brown
• FarmOp Capital
• Belchim Crop Protection
• Aurora Software
• Energy Transfer
• Arthur J Gallagher
• BB&P Feed
• Meyer Agri-Air Inc.
• Two Rivers Cooperative
• Bruntlett Elevator, Inc.
• Nationwide Insurance
• Premier Crop Systems LLC
• Five Star Coop
• Bunkers Feed & Supply

• Steinbeck & Sons, Inc.
• Van Maanen Seed & Chemical, Inc.
• Aspinwall Coop Co.
• United Services Assn., Inc.
• Northland CDL Training
• Tama Benton Cooperative
• Quality Ag Service Inc.
• FJ Krob & Co
• Juhl Feed, Inc
• Ewing Enterprises, Inc.
• Dave's Feed Store, Inc.
• Continental NH3 Products Co. Inc.
• Aurora Elevator, Inc.
• Anfinson Farm Store, Inc.

Not currently a member? Click Here to send us an email so we can follow up with your company and help you get connected to AAI.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR EXHIBITORS

Registration Opens October 30 at 10:00 AM.

Details for exhibitors about the Agribusiness Showcase & Conference will be sent out next week to all known past exhibitors and sponsors. Want to make sure you are on the list? Click below:

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October 13

Agribusiness Showcase Committee Meeting

1:30 PM | AAI Main Office Board Room

December 11

AAI Legislative Committee Meeting

10:00 AM | AAI Main Office Board Room

When Michael Castellano tells people there are billions of different variations of farmer decisions and environmental conditions that can affect how much nitrogen fertilizer is just enough for a plot of corn, he’s occasionally chided for embellishing. Really? Billions?

“They’ll say, ‘Mike we get that it’s complex. You don’t need to exaggerate.’ But I’m not exaggerating. When you do the math, it’s literally billions of possible combinations of hybrid varieties, management practices, weather and other variables,” said Castellano, the William T. Frankenberger Professor of Soil Science and an Iowa State University professor of agronomy.

That uncertainty has big economic and environmental implications. Applying too little nitrogen hurts yields. Applying too much hurts profits because nitrogen is typically the most expensive input for corn production. Excess nitrogen in fields also contributes to water and air pollution.

Despite incentives to use just the right amount of nitrogen fertilizer on corn fields, current official recommendations are broad and ideal rates can vary widely from field to field and year to year. A research team led by Castellano and his ISU colleague Sotirios Archontoulis, Pioneer Hi-Bred Agronomy Professor, is collecting data from trials across Iowa – mostly in fields of participating volunteer farmers – to build models that offer far more granular guidance. 

“This project is an investment that will help keep Iowa the best place in the world to grow corn and soybeans,” Castellano said.

The research team plans to develop three decision-making tools:

• Updated and more dynamic benchmark recommendations for nitrogen rates will account for differences in genetics, soil, management and weather. Farmers also will be able to see anonymized data from trials to see the real-world outcomes of various rates and practices.
• Forecasting will estimate ideal rates based on current and near-term predictions for soil and weather conditions. That’s important because weather has a disproportionate impact on nitrogen rates, Castellano said.
• Hindcasting will help farmers look back at a prior growing year to explore how their crop’s nitrogen needs would have changed if they’d done things differently, from planting a different hybrid to applying at a different time.
• Castellano said the goal is to continually refresh the tools with new trial data every year.

“As long as farmers are innovating and the weather is changing, optimal nitrogen rates will be changing. We need ongoing research to provide farmers the information to make the best decisions possible,” he said.

[...] Read Full Story

The combination of high interest rates and a strong U.S. dollar is beginning to take a disproportionate toll on rural industries like agriculture, forest products, mining and manufacturing. Most international transactions are still conducted in dollars, and a strong dollar makes U.S. exports more expensive and imports cheaper. That disproportionally hurts the backbone of the rural economy, according to a new quarterly report from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange.

While the U.S. economy is outperforming expectations, the rest of the world—Europe and China in particular—has fallen short. As a result of the U.S. economic position relative to other countries, the dollar has gotten much stronger than previously anticipated. The expectation that interest rates will remain high for the foreseeable future has also contributed to the strengthening dollar.

“The challenge for agriculture and other rural industries that rely heavily on global markets is their export partners simply can’t afford to buy U.S. products,” said Rob Fox, director of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange. “When you combine the loss of exports with a general slowdown in the U.S. economy, it’s a double whammy for many businesses operating in rural America.” 

The disruptive geopolitical and economic events in recent years resulted in the historically irregular situation where commodity prices and the dollar were both moving upward in tandem. But those events are now fading as market drivers. The fundamental inverse relationship between the broad array of commodities and the dollar has largely returned.

CoBank said farm bill negotiations will take a back seat while the House of Representatives attempts to select a new speaker and Congress works to pass its annual appropriations bills before the Continuing Resolution expires on Nov. 17. The most likely outcome is an agreement by year-end to extend the current farm bill by a few months or up to a year or more.

[...] Read Full Story

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has cut back on the regulatory relief it provides for carriers and drivers during emergencies declared at the state level.

The changes, announced on Tuesday, ensure that “the relief granted through emergency declarations is appropriate and tailored to the specifics of the circumstances and emergencies being addressed,” the FMCSA stated.

“This rule also revises the process for extending automatic emergency regulatory relief where circumstances warrant and allows for potential reporting requirements when FMCSA issues an extension or modification.”

The stricter provisions mean that during a regional emergency called by a state governor as a result of weather or other supply chain disruptions, drivers and carriers will be exempt only from daily and weekly limits on driving time, but not from other requirements — such as driver medical certifications and vehicle inspection requirements — which had automatically been exempt in emergency waivers since 1992.

FMCSA has also reduced the duration of automatic relief from 30 days to 14 days for those regional emergency declarations, a middle ground after pushback from trucking groups and 27 Republican lawmakers on the agency’s initial proposal to cut it to five days.

“These commenters noted that five days may not be long enough to deal with certain emergencies, citing various examples of emergencies from recent years, where emergency relief efforts extended beyond five days,” FMCSA stated.

[...] Read Full Story

Given our magazine’s target market, I don’t spend that much time “down on the farm” itself. Typically, my interaction with grower-customers tends to come at various trade shows held throughout the year where farmer panels may be present.

Here, such as the one recently held in conjunction with the 2023 Tech Hub LIVE event in Des Moines, IA, this past July, grower-customers usually discuss the key market challenges facing their operations. At the Tech Hub LIVE grower panel, this included many of the usual suspects for anyone working in the agricultural world these days — concerns about data sharing, how to relay the complexities of the business to the general public, and of course, labor.

This past June, however, I had the chance to visit an actual working farm in my home state of Ohio. Sayre Farms was founded in 1969, when Stanley Sayre moved to Mantua, OH, from Pennsylvania, where he had been raising potatoes. His son, Chuck, now runs the family farm, and it was he who invited a group of CropLife® magazine representatives to stop by for a visit.

According to Sayre, his father originally grew myriad products on the family farm, including vegetables. However, as labor issues became more of a concern back in the 1980s, Sayre Farms switched over to easier-to-manage row crops. Today, the farm primarily grows corn, soybeans, and wheat on “a little less than 2,000 acres,” said Sayre. The operation also conducts aerial crop spraying for customers using a helicopter.

[...] Read Full Story

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