It is said that 'knowledge is the bedrock of existence'. As such, this blog serves to freely inform the general public about the importance of agriculture. The blog also serves to educate people on the different products that could be used on plants and animals to boost their growth and minimise loss and mortality.
Feeding cattle just got easier thanks to the Libra TMR app from
Central City Scale, Inc. The app builds and manages your rations, pens,
and feed groups wirelessly.
With this new technology, cattle feeders as
well as dairy producers know the exact weight of ingredients going into
the mixer and can track what has been fed to each pen. The app, which is
iPad-based, connects to load cells on the feed mixer via Bluetooth.
The operator simply enters the feed ingredient information into the
app, along with rations for each of the ingredients. Information is
assigned to what ration gets fed to which pen and how many head are in
each pen.
By entering the name of your feed group, Libra TMR will let you
know how much weight volume of each ingredient is required for each
ration being mixed.
The system will also allow the operator to scale by dry matter. The
operator can input and adjust dry matter percentages for ingredients or
record as fed.
The Libra TMR allows the feed mixer operator to use a smartphone
or tablet as a full-featured indicator. The number of remote displays
are unlimited.
Users can also set a custom timer for mixing between each ingredient
or after all ingredients have been loaded, which helps generate a total
mixed ration (TMR). Automatically adjust the batch size based on any
loaded ingredient.
In addition, feeding schedules for different feed groups can be
created to increase efficiency. Being able to enter bunk readings in the
system allows the operator to quickly adjust rations and feed amounts.
Using the Agrimatics’ cloud service, which will be available soon, a
nutritionist will be able to log in and remotely manage rations for
customers.
To learn more, visit ccscales.com or call 800/582-3175.
When Dermot Hayes traveled to China last fall, he saw something
eye-opening. Pork with the Smithfield Foods label was selling for twice
what the local Chinese product was bringing.
Smithfield, which is owned by the Chinese company WH Group, is
raising and killing pigs in the U.S. and shipping carcasses to China for
processing and packaging in that country. The plan is working.
“Chinese consumers will pay a premium for U.S. product,” says Hayes,
Iowa State University professor and Pioneer Chair in Agribusiness. “The
Chinese product is heavily discounted.”
Consumers trust U.S. pork more than Chinese pork, where drug
withdraws and other regulations are not as well monitored, says Hayes.
2. Will Chinese companies buy more U.S. pork producers?
“I keep waiting for that to happen,” says Hayes. When Chinese
investors rank companies they would like to buy, U.S. agricultural
companies are often at the top of the lists, he says.
“I suspect there are Chinese investors checking out various large
U.S. integrated pork producers right now,” says Hayes. For example, he
expects that once Prestage Foods of Iowa builds its new pork packing
plant near Eagle Grove in 2018, a Chinese company will swoop in. “They
are looking for large private pork producers that have integrated into
packing,” he explains.
It is more economical for China to import pork rather than corn or
soybeans, says Hayes. “It’s best to import the final product because of
transportation costs. When they buy from Smithfield they buy at cost of
production.”
The chart below shows Chinese imports of all pork products starting
in 1995 (when there was nothing) to 2016. There is lots of potential for
the U.S. to sell more to China.
“We are not in that market as much as we could be, so the European
pork industry has been kicked back into profitability,” says Hayes.
“Europe has been so busy in China we are getting back into our
traditional markets of Japan and Korea.”
U.S. pork exports to China jumped up last November and have stayed
up. “November was a huge month for exports, and partially responsible
for the uptick in hog prices,” says Hayes. He thought the China bounce
would happen sooner in 2016.
3. What’s holding us back with exports?
“We saw this China thing coming, but I thought we would get
ractopamine out of the system faster than we did.” This feed additive
that promotes lean muscle growth has been popular in the U.S. until
recently, but is banned in China.
Hayes estimates that half of the U.S. swine industry still feeds
ractopamine, especially in the summer when the hog market is
traditionally higher, but that number has shrunk in the past year as
more packers go “racto-free” in their plants. This is a drastic change
from just two years ago when the only U.S. pork company trying to
eliminate ractopamine was Smithfield, and that was only on one farm in
Illinois, says Hayes.
The ability to export to China if your plant is racto-free means the
feed additive is on the wane. Triumph Foods recently went made the
switch to eliminate it from its farms and plants.
“I struggle with the ractopomine issue,” says Hayes. “I’m all for
science, but the customer is always right. More and more producers will
quit using it; that’s already happening.”
4. Will China expand?
“Chinese pork producers are making a fortune, as much as $80 a hog,
so you would expect they would increase production,” says Hayes.
“However, year over year their sow numbers are going down.”
Modern pig farms are under scrutiny in China, he says. “People are
getting fed up with pollution and a lot of modern hog facilities are
right in the heart of cities. The pigs are in the wrong place. The
fundamental problem is pigs and people are in the same places.”
The central government slapped a duty on all pork and gave permission
to local governments to shut down facilities, killing 10 million sows,
says Hayes. “The government is trying to shut down smaller units, has
been for the past seven years. They are finally getting rid of the last
of the backyard units.”
In one province, the Chinese government forcibly closed 70,000 pig
farms producing 5 million pigs, says Hayes. “About 10,000 sows were
dumped in a river.” There is a national ban on pork production near
markets or highways and restrictions on how to dispose of manure.
“However, the pig producers located farthest away from people are making so much money it’s crazy,” says Hayes.
5. How easy is it to expand in China?
“In areas where the government wants them to go, I suspect expansion
is easy,” says Hayes. One challenge to increasing pig numbers is “their
sows are just not very productive, mainly because of disease pressure,”
he explains.
China doesn’t want to drive imported pork prices too high because
their volume of demand is so big. “When they do buy they shoot
themselves in foot because they cause prices to be more expensive,” says
Hayes.
China is comfortable importing 5% of its muscle meat needs, he says.
That may sound small, but they were importing less than 1%. And 5% of
China’s protein needs is a lot. “They are going to need to import 10
million tons of meat,” says Hayes. This includes pork, poultry, and
beef. Poultry will be difficult due to trade restrictions. China lifted
trade restrictions on U.S. beef last year, but there is no beef moving
there yet.
History shows if a developing country gets access to pork it starts
importing pork instead of importing corn and soybeans, explains Hayes.
This happens in about a 10-year period. “If that happens with China you
can see more pig farms being put into the Dakotas and Kansas.”
6. Are there countries outside of China we should be watching?
“Vietnam is like a small China 10 years behind, but
it’s so hot there they will never have productive sows,” says Hayes.
That means we may have access to 100 million people who are going to eat
a lot more pork in their future.
Central and South America will see trade increases,
he predicts. Southern Brazil imports corn and that’s where the good pork
producers are located. “But production costs are not any better than
ours,” he says. Western and Central Brazil have foot and mouth disease.
They vaccinate swine herds, but because cattle and wild animals are
infected, “there is no solution.”
Mexico will grow in pig numbers, says Hayes. “Mexico
is growing as an importer and as an exporter. It’s possible some
boneless hams they export came from U.S. originally, but we will never
know because there is a substantial transformation so it’s Mexican
product.” Mexico has cheap labor to remove the bone.
Mexico bought a lot of U.S. pork last November, helping our hog
prices, says Hayes. “One thing I learned talking to exporters, they look
at the forward curves in futures. It was telling them to fill their
freezers in November. Mexico was down all year in imports and suddenly
in November and December they are back up. They saw what going on in our
futures market.”
Canadian hog production is growing, too, he says.
Over 300,000 more feeder pigs came into the U.S. from Canada last year
than in 2015. The exchange rates and strength of the U.S. dollar have
helped.
The U.S. is lagging behind where we should be in exports to China,
says Hayes, and “Canada is taking advantage of this. Canadian exports
are really high right now.”
Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) hurt Canadian pork producers, he
says. “The fact that we would do that damaged their confidence.” When
the final rule amended the regulations to remove beef and pork from
mandatory COOL requirements (along with the cheap dollar and general
profitability in North America), Canadian hog farms geared up.
7. What should concern us?
One concern with Mexico, says Hayes, is if President Trump gets in a
border war. “We export more than 10% of our pork to Mexico. He talks
loosely about slapping duties on things like cars coming in from Mexico.
He can’t do that, because they retaliate against where you are weak. It
would be crazy to do that. But just because it’s crazy, doesn’t mean it
won’t happen.”
In November, for example, we exported 28% of the pork we produced,” says Hayes, “so we can’t afford a disease or a trade war.”
A border adjustment tax, where a tax is levied on imports, is being
considered and could be controversial, says Hayes. “When we export pork
to Europe, China, and Japan, as soon as it lands there is a value-added
tax put on it. If they export pork to us they get a refund on their
value added tax. We are thinking about switching over to that system.”
8. What about domestic markets in 2017?
November and December were expected to be a really bad time for U.S.
pork producers, due to a record supply of hogs and pork, and suddenly we
got this bump in exports, says Hayes.
Lee Schulz, assistant professor and Extension livestock economist at
Iowa State University, was watching the domestic market closely.
“Producers were aggressively marketing hogs throughout the fall,
expecting the historical price crash post Thanksgiving,” says Schulz.
“We were able to pull some of those hogs forward and spread out supply,
and didn’t stress capacity as much. It’s amazing that the industry
collectively was able to do that. Packer margins were strong so they had
incentive to kill those hogs earlier and pay higher prices to do that.
They didn’t want to pay overtime, so they spread out the supply a little
bit more.”
Hayes agrees. “It was beautiful how the market told us we were going
to have a problem, we saw the problem coming, and we fixed that.”
9. What is the good news?
“We have two large plants coming online in 2017, and another in
2018,” says Schulz. “When they open, packers are going to have to get
after those hogs.
They want to operate near capacity level to spread out
their fixed costs, so it is going to put a little bit more leverage in
the hands of producers. They want their pork to be on shelves, on
food-service menus or in shipping containers going for export, so that
is setting up competition and support for prices later in 2017. Until
then it’s still a demand story.”
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As part of its social investment programmes, the Federal Government
of Nigeria has disbursed N375million for the feeding of 700, 000 primary
school pupils in 5 states.
The Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the
Vice-President, Laolu Akande, disclosed that the money was released for
the implementation of the Home grown School Feeding Programme in
Anambra, Ogun, Oyo, Osun and Ebonyi state to cover the feeding for 10
school days.
According to Akande, “the sum of about N375, 434, 870 has just been
released and paid to 7,909 cooks in those States for the feeding of a
total of 677, 476 primary school pupils”.
Giving the breakdown, he said Ogun state got a total of N119, 648,
900 paid to 1,381 cooks to feed 170, 927 pupils while Ebonyi got N115,
218, 600 paid to 1,466 cooks to feed 164, 598 pupils.
For Anambra, Akande stated that N67.5 million paid to 937 cooks to
feed 96,489 pupils, Oyo state got N72.2 million paid to 1,437 cooks to
feed 103, 269 pupils, and Osun got N867,370 paid to 2,688 to feed 142,
193 pupils.
The Vice President’s spokesperson further disclosed that Zamfara and
Enugu States would soon be paid N188.7 million and N67.2 million,
respectively, later this week.
He informed that in Zamfara, the sum would be paid to 2,738 cooks to
feed 269, 665 pupils and in Enugu, 1128 cooks would be paid N67.2
million to feed 96, 064 pupils
The Cocoa Exporters Association of
Nigeria, CEAN, has urged Federal government to restore the era when
Cocoa was a major avenue of revenue generation in the country.
The association recalled that in the
1960s and 1970s, the country banked on the commodity as the largest
foreign revenue earning and one of the leading cocoa producers, but
today, Nigeria is seventh in world ranking.
A statement by the Secretary-General of
the Association, Kayode Babade in Akure, noted that Nigeria “has all it
takes to take over the leadership position in cocoa production in the
world, if farmers and exporters are encouraged adequately by the
government.”
It however commended President Muhammed
Buhari and the Minister for Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh for
inaugurating the Cocoa Re-launch Committee aimed at diversifying the
economy to an agric-based.
This development, the association observed would boost the vision to make Nigeria becoming the world’s largest cocoa producer.
According to the statement, “CEAN had in
the past contributed immensely to the growth and expansion of cocoa in
the country by providing loans and herbicides to farmers to enable them
increase production.
“With this federal government
initiative,we are equally ready to further partner with the farmers to
ensure that the federal government vision on increased cocoa production
comes to reality very soon.”
The CEAN president, Pius Ayodele urged
the committee to make a success of the new assignment, stressing that as
major stakeholders in the cocoa value chain, it looked forward to the
cocoa re-launch campaign coming up at Ondo in March this year.
He promised that his association would
contribute to the success of the scheme to ensure that Nigeria’s
production of cocoa improves greatly like in Ivory Coast and Ghana.
