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.
Hog markets have dropped to unprofitable levels for many
producers this fall. “This is a challenging time for agriculture and
especially for our producers,” says Jan Archer, National Pork Board
(NPB) president and a pork producer from Goldsboro, North Carolina. “Our
goal is to help producers during this time and provide consumers with a
great value and quality pork.”
Archer shared a few of the things the NPB, using Pork Checkoff funds, is doing to keep pork moving and help producers.
1) Partnering with major grocery retailers.
This fall the NPB is working with the top 10 U.S. grocery retailers,
including a holiday promotion for Walmart with on-pack recipe labels,
digital marketing, email blasts, and in-store pork promotions. Costco
had an October “Porktober” promotion, consisted of in-store pork product
demos, instant rebate coupons on featured pork cuts, and advertising in
the Costco Connection member magazine. Kroger is driving pork loin,
shoulder, and ham sales for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The program
includes radio and digital ads and in-store events.
2) Focusing on foodservice.
NPB is working with high-volume restaurants to present a clear
message around the opportunity pork presents through versatility,
profitability, availability, and customer appeal. To reach the industry
at large, the foodservice team will launch a print and digital brand
campaign with custom ads from February through May 2017.
3) Keeping pork top of mind via digital marketing and PR.
During the holidays, the Pork Checkoff is encouraging consumers to
make every moment – big or small – one worth celebrating. The Make it a
Moment campaign is helping pork stand out from the typical holiday
messages. "Using social media technology, we connect social media users
with great-tasting pork recipes to match their meal plans," says
Archer. When people visit the Pork Be inspired Facebook page, they can
open Facebook Messenger to help find the right recipe.
4) Maximizing multicultural marketing.
The NPB is promoting budget-friendly pork and building on the success
of summer’s Grill For It campaign, which incorporated a
Spanish-language component. New promotions showcase the Make it a Moment
campaign and feature our Spanish-language site, including new 1-minute
videos to help consumers become more comfortable with cooking pork.
5) Inspiring new trends.
To help bolster pork sales, the Pork Checkoff is working with retail
partners to encourage consumers to broaden their options. Along with
ham, NPB is promoting pork roast as a holiday meal.
6) Promoting U.S. pork exports.
While the high value of the U.S. dollar and competition from other
countries in key export markets has curbed U.S. pork export demand,
there are positive signs on the horizon, says Archer. “About 25% of U.S.
pork production goes overseas, and we need to keep moving product to
keep producers profitable.” Mexico, China, Japan, Korea and Canada are
pork’s big five buyers, and the Pork Checkoff, through the U.S. Meat
Export Federation, continues to invest in pork promotions overseas.
7) Reaching online consumers.
As consumers search for recipes online for meal planning, the Pork
Checkoff’s online ads are reminding them about pork’s great taste and
value, says Archer. They are also working directly with food bloggers on
PorkBeInspired.com.
“Together, we can get through this time,” says Archer. “Pork
producers are resilient. We’ve faced challenges before. We want to help
our producers in any way we can.”
By the mid-1950s, the writing was on the wall for agriculture.
Farmers, particularly those living in the West and Midwest, wanted more
horsepower from their tractors.
Looking to expand its market share, Oliver responded to that call
with a new generation of machines that set horsepower standards that the
tractor industry would follow for the next decade. Leading Oliver’s
charge was the Super 99, introduced in 1954.
Beefy in appearance and big by any measure of the day, the Oliver
Super 99 was sold with a choice of either gas or diesel engines. It was
the diesel power plant and, in particular, a special model hosting a
General Motors two-cycle engine that caught everyone’s eye at the time.
The 70-hp. barrier
The Super 99 GM turned out a whopping rated 71½ hp. at its belt.
Under a drawbar load, the tractor generated 58½ hp., which justified its
rating as a five- to six-bottom plow tractor.
The heart of this beast was a three-cylinder diesel with a relatively
small displacement considering its horsepower output. The engine’s
three cylinders (with a 4¼×5-inch bore-and-stroke per cylinder) combined
for a displacement of 213 inches. This compares with 302 cubic inches
in the six-cylinder diesel powering the regular Super 99.
This was a two-cycle engine that ran at a rated 1,675 rpm. Although
it had just three cylinders, the engine developed as many power strokes
as the regular diesel. Due to a supercharger that forced air into the
cylinders during the beginning of the intake and compression strokes,
the GM diesel developed more horsepower than a comparable-size
six-cylinder diesel.
Power for the regular Oliver 99 came from an Oliver-Waukesha-built
six-cylinder diesel with 65-belt hp. Both Super 99s were equipped with a
six-speed transmission, independent PTO, belt pulley, and hydraulic
system. Although both tractors were dressed in the same styling, the
Super 99 GM hosted twin air stacks and a singular supercharger
protruding from its engine that lent it a distinctive look in the field.
undisputed king of horsepower
By today’s standards, the Oliver 99s seem piddling, power wise. In
the 1950s, however, rarely did wheeled tractors produce more than 60 hp.
The only competition for the regular Super 99 diesel (on a rated belt
horsepower basis) was International Harvester’s 57-hp. McCormick Super
WD-9, John Deere’s 57½-hp. 80 diesel, and Minneapolis-Moline’s 56-hp. GB
diesel.
The Super 99 GM stood alone as the undisputed king of farm
horsepower, overshadowed only by the massive construction crawlers of
that time.
Soybeans Lower in Overnight Trading; Money Managers Most Bullish HRW Since June 2014.
1. Soybeans Decline as Weather Improves in Argentina
Soybeans were lower in overnight trading as less precipitation in
Argentina will likely allow growers to finish planting in the world’s
third-largest producer of the oilseeds.
Showers will continue in eastern parts of the South American country
for the next six to 10 days, but “continued drier weather in central
areas this week will allow wetness there to ease further,” said Donald
Keeney, a senior ag meteorologist at MDA Information Services.
Excessive rainfall has kept planting behind its normal pace in
Argentina. Growers should be able to seed fields they were unable to
plant due to the wet weather.
Corn and Kansas City wheat also were lower, while Chicago wheat was little changed.
Soybean futures for March delivery fell 8¢ to $10.59½ a bushel
overnight on the Chicago Board of Trade. Soy meal futures lost $3.50 to
$345.20 a short ton, and soy oil declined 0.04¢ to 35.11¢ a pound.
Corn futures fell a penny to $3.68¾ a bushel overnight.
Wheat for March delivery ¼¢ to $4.28 a bushel in Chicago, while Kansas City futures dropped 2½¢ to $4.40½ a bushel.
**
2. Money Managers Push Hard Red Winter Net Longs to Highest Since June 2014
Money managers continue to get more bullish on hard red winter wheat
grown in the Southern Plains, pushing their net-long positions to the
highest level in more than two years.
Speculators were net-long 26,451 hard red winter wheat contracts last
week, the biggest such position since June 2014, according to data from
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The bullishness in hard red winter contracts comes as growers slash
acres. Overall winter wheat area dropped 10% to 32.4 million acres
during planting last year, the Department of Agriculture said in a
report earlier this month, the second-lowest ever and the least since
1909.
Sowing of hard red winter wheat, used to make bread and highly sought
by overseas buyers, declined by 12%, and soft red winter seeding fell
5.6%, according to the USDA. Growers in Nebraska and Utah planted
record-low amounts of wheat, the agency said.
Money managers were actually more bearish soft red winter wheat last
week, though only slightly. The number of net-short positions, or bets
against higher prices, rose to 97,245 contracts from 96,583 the prior
week, according to the CFTC.
**
3. Winter Storm Watch Goes Into Effect Early Tuesday as Snow, Wind Expected
A winter storm watch will take effect starting early Tuesday for much
of northern Nebraska, southern South Dakota, southern Minnesota, and
northern Iowa.
The storm is expected to move into the region overnight, bringing as
much as 8 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.
There is a potential for higher amounts in some areas, the agency said.
Winds also may be a problem, as gusts up to 30 mph are forecast. The
storm will make driving difficult as roads will become snowpacked
quickly, the NWS said.
If you do, then are you conversant with the different uses of this crop?
If you are still thinking of the answers to the above questions, this piece will take the burden off you. CASSAVA is the largest grown crop in Africa, Nigeria precisely. The
use of cassava is generally classified into two – Culinary
and Industrial.
Culinary Use
The boiled root tastes similar to potato and is a great side for meat
dishes or in soups. Cassava is handled similarly to potatoes, meaning
they are eaten as mash, fried or boiled.
Mashing up cassava to make fufu
Cassava “mash”, fufu, is widely consumed by pounding and sieving
cassava to make flour which is then stirred in hot water. This is a
particularly popular food in Nigeria, Ghana and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
African Dish “fufu” with vegetable sauce "egusi soap"
Cassava is used to make garri, a kind of cassava porridge, which is a
white flour made from fermented cassava tubers. The flour can be added
to cold water and milk and seasoned to taste. Women processing cassava to make garri
Garri, made from cassavaCassava can be fried and offered as “yuca frita” as a side dish (a chicken soup).
Carimañola is a Panamanian dish that is a stuffed cassava fritter.
It is normally stuffed with cheese, meat or chicken and then fried.
Cassava is used in the form of tapioca which is a flavorless, starchy ingredient
used as a thickening agent in foods. It is gluten-free and therefore
used in many gluten-free foods. Tapioca is also used to make tapioca
pudding and used to make gluten-free bread. Tapioca is also a main
ingredient in the popular Bubble Tea, a Taiwanese Drink that has a tea
base and includes tapioca pearls.
Industrial Use
Cassava pellets is used as animal feeds. It provides a lot of calories
to animals.
Cassava Pellets
Cassava when fermented and distilled produces Ethanol. Ethanol can be
mixed with petrol or used on its own as a transport fuel. It can also
be used as a base for alcoholic beverages. Lastly, ethanol can be
utilized as industrial alcohol which is important in the
pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry.
Cassava Flour is gluten-free and can be used as a substitute for wheat flour.
Starch can be extracted from cassava roots used by the food industry
to form products sold in small packages for household cooking, but
also used by the paper and textile industry, as well as an adhesive in
glass, mineral wool and clay.
Cassava FlourThought for a new week: How adequately do you think cassava is being utilized in Africa.
About 16, 000 farmers in Bauchi State have been selected to
participate in the state’s Anchor Borrowers Programme for the 2017 rice
production scheme.
The Consultant to the state government on the programme, Dr. Nura
AbdulMalik who disclosed this while addressing journalists at the state
capital said the 16,000 were selected out of 25,000 who registered for
the programme.
According to him, “we have verified 16,000 farmers to take part in
the programme and each of them is expected to cultivate one hectare of
rice farm”.
Speaking on the selection process, he informed that the state
government targeted 30, 000 farmers but only 25, 000 registered. However
during the verification, they discovered that some of the farmers could
not meet the scheme’s requirements.
“Some of them are not real practicing farmers; some did not own
farmlands while the farmland of some of them are not suitable for
irrigated agriculture” he explained.
AbdulMalik said the selected farmers were currently undergoing
training on the best agronomic practices across all the 20 local
government areas in the state.
He however urged farmers to be fully involved in the training adding
that the banks would not give loan to farmers who failed to participate
in the ongoing training in local government areas of the state.
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.
