Merger Means Finalization of Landus Cooperatives

Kelly Marshall

Landus-LogoThe final merger between Farmers Cooperative Company (FC) and West Central Cooperatives has been completed.  Landus Cooperative is officially established.

The new farmer-owned agricultural cooperative is headquartered in Ames, Iowa.  They have more than 725 full-time employees in more than 70 locations with approximately 7,000 members.

“While today’s signing ceremony to formalize Landus Cooperativeze is historic for our employees, our communities and the greater cooperative industry, we are focused on what this merger means for our customers and members going forward,” said newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Milan Kucerak who formerly served as President and CEO at West Central.

“Merging two strong cooperatives allows further diversification throughout the supply chain and opens local and global opportunities for added value and growth on behalf of our members,” added Kucerak. “In short, the purpose of this merger is to make two cooperative organizations better than either one could be separately for employees, members and customers.”

The new board members, executive team and information about the company can be found on the interim website, LandusCooperative.com.  The full integration of both organization is still a work in progress, although preparation has been going on since the first membership vote was announced.  The new logo will begin to appear, but the integration of accounting and operational systems will be unfolding over the next several months.

Kucerak stressed the cooperative’s transition plans for customers. “We plan to make this transition as easy and streamlined for our customers and their operations as possible.”

The new cooperative is n ow one of the largest grain storage companies in North America and has shuttle-loading access on all seven of Iowa’s major rail lines.  They offer full precision agronomy services,expert marketing services and have a proprietary brand of soybeans along with their corn and soybean processing facility.

Agribusiness, Cooperatives

EPA Opens Comment Period Regarding Dicamba

Kelly Marshall

Monsanto-LogoThe EPA has opened a 30 day comment period to the public covering the topic of dicamba herbicide use with Bollgard II ExtendFlex cotton and Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans.  This step is an important move forward for growers hoping to gain access to dicamba weed-management tools.

A limited commercial introduction of Bollgard II XtendFlex Cotton took place in 2015 with commercial launch in 2016. Monsanto announced its commercialization plans for Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans in February. Monsanto’s Asgrow®, Channel® and regional brands, along with Corn States licensees, expect to introduce more than 70 soybean products across eight maturity groups with agronomic traits including resistance to nematodes and phytophthora root rot. Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans are broadly licensed to more than 100 seed brands.

Currently federal and state laws prohibit the use of dicamba on either Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans or Bollgard II ExtendFlex cotton since there are no products approved for that use.  Dicamba has been safely used is the U.S. as well as 25 other countries on corn, wheat, fallow and pasture land.  Approval would mean growers could use dicamba on soybeans tolerant to dicamba and glyphosate and on cotton tolerant to dicamba, glyphosate and glufosinate.

“Stakeholder comments will really make a difference,” said Kim Magin, Monsanto’s Director of Industry Affairs. “Supportive letters are important for regulators to understand the various perspectives from farmers and agricultural stakeholders.”

You can add your support to the process with Monsanto’s online tool.

Ag Groups, Cotton, EPA, Soybean

New Insights On Colony Collapse Disorder

Lizzy Schultz

vcsPRAsset_3189465_61152_3996baaf-0743-48d1-b129-3f020503ee1f_0 Researchers from Arizona State University’s (ASU) School of Life Sciences recently discovered that the commonly accepted claim that blames nutritional deprivation for the increasing collapse of honey bee colonies is incorrect. The two studies published by ASU researchers found that the stress of short-term nutritional deprivation as larvae actually makes honey bees more resilient to starvation as adults. The findings were published this week in two papers in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

“Surprisingly, we found that short-term starvation in the larval stage makes adult honey bees more adaptive to adult starvation. This suggests that they have an anticipatory mechanism like solitary organisms do,” said Ying Wang, assistant research professor with the school and lead author of the two investigations. Wang said they found evidence of this mechanism in several areas such as behavior, endocrine physiology, metabolism and gene regulation.

The anticipatory mechanism discussed in the studies, also called Predictive Adaptive Response, explains a possible correlation between prenatal nutritional stress and adult metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes. These findings show for the first time that social organisms can have this mechanism.

The studies also found that when bees experience starvation as larvae, they are able to reduce their metabolic rate, maintain their blood sugar levels, and use other fuels faster than the control bees during starvation, which increased the probability of their survival under a starvation situation.

Since bees are critical to the world’s food supply, learning how bees cope with stressors is critical to understanding honey bee health and performance. Managed honey bee colonies have declined worldwide, and the current global population has decreased to 2.5 million, compared to the global bee population of 5 million in the 1940s. This phenomenon comes at a time when the global demand for food is rising to meet the nutrition needs of 7.4 billion people.

Most existing research on bee nutrition has focused on using adult honey bees, rather than their young. This new information changes the current understanding of colony collapse disorder and provides new avenues to study.

Ag Groups, Bees, Conservation, Environment, pollinators, Research, Sustainability

Pope Francis Prays for Small Farmers

Chuck Zimmerman

pope-francisEach month the Pope publishes a special prayer intention. The faithful are encouraged to add their prayers to his.

For April, 2016 he Holy Father’s universal prayer intention is: “That small farmers may receive a just reward for their precious labour”.

I say a big AMEN to that prayer and hope you’ll join in.

Pope Francis also issues a prayer intention for evangelization and for this month that is, “That Christians in Africa may give witness to love and faith in Jesus Christ amid political-religious conflicts”.

Farming, International

Bayer Requests EPA Hearing on Pesticide

Cindy Zimmerman

bayer-beltBayer is taking its disagreement with the Environmental Protection Agency over registrations for the pesticide flubendiamide, marketed as Belt® in the United States, to the administrative level.

This week, the company formally requested a hearing before EPA’s Administrative Law Judge to argue their case. Bayer has already rejected a request by EPA to voluntarily withdraw registration for flubendiamide-containing products, which would make them unavailable to growers in the U.S. EPA subsequently filed a formal Notice of Intent to Cancel these registrations.

“We have a fundamental disagreement with EPA over science and process surrounding the registration of flubendiamide and Belt,” says Bayer Vice President for Regulatory Affairs Dana Sargent. “The science is on our side.”

Bayer is asking that the Administrative Law Judge and Environmental Appeals Board address Bayer’s argument about whether a more complete public review will take place. Once EPA grants the hearing, the Administrative Law Judge’s initial determination will then be reviewed by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board. The hearing can last up to 75 days. In the meantime, growers can still use Belt and retailers and distributors can still sell it.

Bayer, Crop Protection, EPA, pesticides

ScoutPro is Growing

Cindy Zimmerman

scoutpro-stuartAgWired first introduced us to ScoutPro back in 2011 but the company has come a long way since then.

ScoutPro co-founder Stuart McCulloh says the company started by three entrepreneurial Iowa State University students is now full service crop scouting program. At the recent Commodity Classic the company announced the apps are now a free download because, as McCulloh points out, everyone is scouting crops in some capacity.

scoutpro“We’re all out there checking on what’s going on,” he says. “We’re getting kind of a mental picture of what needs to happen or what we need to be on the look out, so why not have something there that helps take a little bit better, a little more consistent notes. Why not have that iPad there to identify a disease that maybe you’re not familiar with or a weed that kind of popped up randomly and you’re not quite sure what it is. So really empowering growers to do scouting and take those scouting reports to whomever they want to use for their application needs.”

And ScoutPro is useful for more than just the summer season. Growers gearing up for planting season will find value in the ability to pull maps from last year and analyze diseases or problems to prepare early on for this year.

Making better informed decisions is the end goal, because the people behind this product understand that every farmer is already busy. They already have their hands full with new products and services and technology. So why ScoutPro? “Because you’re doing this anyway,” McCulloh tells growers.

To learn more about the ScoutPro service check out their website at www.scoutpro.org, or follow them on social media to see what’s new. You can also listen to the full interview to hear more about the apps and the program: Interview with Stuart McCulloh, ScoutPro

Apps, Audio, Precision Agriculture

Zimfo Bytes

Talia Goes

Zimfo Bytes

  • The National Potato Council (NPC) will award one $10,000 academic scholarship to honor a graduate student (Master’s degree or higher) working to improve the future of the U.S. potato industry.
  • USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) announces the retirement of Mark Harris, Chairperson of USDA’s Agricultural Statistics Board and Director of the Methodology Division, after a 36 year career with NASS.
  • Penton Agriculture, the largest most diversified agriculture information business in North America, announces that Editor of Wallaces Farmer, Rod Swoboda, has been honored with an Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Leader Award for his innovative content.
  • Syngenta will launch 16 new crop protection products in 2016, with multiple launches expected over the next five years, according to Jeff Cecil, head of crop protection product marketing for Syngenta, North America.
  • Cultivating the next generation of farmers and ranchers to carry on the legacy of American agriculture is the main focus of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Beginning Farmer Institute.
  • Massey Ferguson, a global brand of AGCO Corporation(NYSE:AGCO), is pleased to introduce “The Last Tractor You’ll Ever Need” campaign.
Zimfo Bytes

Corn Up, Soybeans Down in #USDA Report

Cindy Zimmerman

USDAThe 2016 Prospective Plantings report out today from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) shows farmers expect to plant more corn and less soybeans this year.

U.S. corn growers expect to plant 93.6 million acres to corn this year, the first increase in corn planted acreage since 2012 and, if realized, will be the third largest corn acreage since 1944. Farmers in 41 out of the 48 states expect to either maintain or increase the number of acres they plant to corn. Growers in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and North Dakota expect to increase their corn acreage by 400,000 or more acres in 2016.

mgexIn contrast, U.S. soybean growers expect to reverse the recent trends, which saw several record-high years. In 2016, growers expect to plant 82.2 million acres to soybeans, a less than one percent decrease from 2015. In Louisiana, Minnesota, and Mississippi, growers expect to decrease their soybean acreage by 200,000 acres or more in 2016. Despite the overall decrease in acreage, growers in North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin expect to see record-high soybean acreages in their states.

Farmers also indicated they expect to plant nine percent less wheat and 11 percent more cotton this year compared to 2015. All wheat planted area for 2016 is estimated at 49.6 million acres and all cotton planted area for 2016 is estimated at 9.56 million acres.

The MGEX crop call on the report featured Jack Scoville of the PRICE Futures Group and his analysis. “We’re seeing an extreme reaction” in the markets as a result of the report, Scoville noted, expressing shock over the corn number.

Listen to his commentary here: MGEX crop commentary with Jack Scoville

Audio, Corn, Cotton, Markets, Soybean, USDA, Wheat

Candidate Trump Addresses #Farm Labor Issues

Cindy Zimmerman

trump-dairyLike Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump also had the opportunity to address the issue of immigration as it relates to farm labor during a CNN town hall forum Tuesday night.

Wisconsin dairy farmer John Pagel explained to Trump that the state’s dairy industry “is being challenged right now by having a labor force dependent on an immigration policy” and asked if he can “develop a policy that will give us that, give us the people that we have here to stay here and do the jobs — and create a policy that can bring people in to fill the jobs?”

Trump noted that dairy farmers are “in the same position as the California grape growers because they need people to come in” and he stressed the word “legally.”

“If you have an industry like California grapes, like perhaps what you’re talking about in Wisconsin, we’re going to let people come in, but they’re going to come in legally,” said Trump. “They’re going to come in through a visa program and they’re going to come in legally. It’s going to work out beautifully, you will not be affected. We don’t want to affect businesses. We want to grow businesses.”

Trump added that another that trade was related to the problem of immigration. “We are going to straighten out our trade policy so that you’re going to get a lot more business,” he said.

Listen to Trump’s answer here: Trump addresses farm labor question

Audio, Dairy, labor, politics

Culver’s Raises Money for 153 FFA Jackets

Kelly Marshall

inside-culvers-thank-you-farmersThe average age of the American farmer gets a little older each year, but Culver’s restaurant is working with their franchisees to encourage the next generation of farmers.  Culver’s Support Center in Prairie Du Sac, Wisconsin and the National FFA Organization are helping match deserving young people with a local Culver’s restaurant where money is being raised to provide that iconic blue FFA jacket for a student who might otherwise not have one.

So far Culver’s has raised nearly $20,000 and will be presenting 153 students with their own jacket this fall.

This jacket is more than just something students wear; it’s representative of the pride, responsibility and tradition that unites more than 629,000 FFA members across the nation. And every student who puts on his or her jacket does so with a commitment to making the future of agriculture brighter.

“FFA members are an incredibly passionate group of people who do so much to better the agricultural community,” shared David Stidham, vice president of marketing at Culver’s. “We’re proud to support these young folks today, so they can lead us tomorrow.”

Learn more about this program at www.culvers.com/farmers.

Ag Groups, FFA