Good morning.
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... drone to ensure the perfect avocado?
In a recent trial, farmers in Australia have been using drones to measure how much water their avocado trees lose on particularly sweltering days (It turns out, trees sweat too).
Just like humans, the more these trees sweat, the more it impacts their hydration and health. And that translates to variations in size, quality, and yield of their avocados.
So here's hoping this drone trial is able to help farmers minimize damage caused by hot conditions. A nation's guacamole depends on it.
The News:
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La Niña’s Three-Peat
- Wheat ‘n’ Wild: Market Responds, Wheat Ships Out
- Investments Beefing Up Meat and Poultry Processing
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Brr. It’s cold in here. There must be La Niña in the atmosphere.
So you’re saying there’s a chance: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there’s a 75% chance of La Niña conditions this winter (for the third season in a row). This is a big deal because over the past 50 years, a three-time repetition of La Niña has only happened three times.
Cold girl: That’s basically what La Niña means. La Niña means ‘the girl’ and comes with below-average sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean. The La Niña conditions will impact weather around the globe.
Going through the big D: And we mean drought. More than six of every 10 acres in the U.S. is in drought.
La Niña winters mean warm, dry winters in the South and wet, cold conditions in the North. With 82% of the country already experiencing drought, that’s no bueno, especially for the southern states.
Areas across the central and southern plains will likely see persistent drought through the winter, which won’t help the winter wheat crop or the already-extremely-low levels on the Mississippi River.
And while the north could see heavier snow precipitation, it will take until spring for the melt to impact river levels.
Not again: The drought in 2012, also a back-to-back La Niña event, caused $30B in damages. Most of that was agricultural loss.
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→ Wagyu on the rise. From year to year, Wagyu registrations are up 23%, and membership in the American Wagyu Association is up 24%, thanks to an upward trajectory of demand for the beef.
→ Not so eggs-cellent. Iowa just saw its first bird flu infection at a commercial bird farm since April—this one at an egg farm in Wright County and forcing the culling of 1M+ chickens.
→ Pandemic prepping. The USDA is funneling $30M to research SARS-CoV-2 in animals, understand the relationship between animals and humans, and continue building an early warning system for future outbreaks.
→ Blockade not doing much blocking. Truckers have not been happy in Brazil, enacting hundreds of road blockades after the country’s recent election—but experts say they’re not impacting exports very much.
→ U.S. ag playing peacekeeper. Economists say that China has not yet invaded Taiwan, because they don’t want to invite sanctions by the U.S. and potentially disrupt their flow of protein imported from the U.S.
→ Good wheat news. As it tries to maintain its food supply, given the Ukraine-Russia chaos, Zimbabwe is expecting a record wheat crop, with estimates at 380K tonnes.
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Wheat ‘n’ Wild: Market Responds, Wheat Ships Out |
Here we go again.
When Vladimir Putin announced a suspension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative last weekend, he had this to say: "We are not… stopping our participation. We are saying that we are pausing it."
And that’s pretty much what happened.
Refresher: Russia blockaded Black Sea ports back when the war began, and exports from Ukraine (responsible for 10% of the world’s wheat exports) came to a standstill.
Back in July, the warring nations agreed to a shipping lane cease-fire.
And the agreement worked—world food prices dropped 15% since a March high, and 397 ships left Ukrainian ports.
But Russia has asserted that most shipments went to prosperous European nations—not to the starving African and Asian countries that need them.
And although a recent U.N. report refuted that claim, Russia shut down the corridor.
And then they changed their minds.
Back in business: In an effort to help curb the literal starvation of thousands of people (especially in drought-stricken African nations), the deal was re-established, and on Thursday, at least seven ships carrying nearly 300K metric tons of grain left Ukraine.
Market mayhem: Russia’s back-and-forth set U.S. grain markets into a yo-yo this week—spiking after the weekend announcement, and plunging back down after Russia changed its tune.
Looking ahead: The situation is still fluid. With Russia offering free wheat due to a bumper crop, high U.S. grain prices (and shipping issues of our own), famine in developing nations, and Ukraine planting way less winter wheat than last year, there’s bound to be a bumpy road ahead.
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Land just sold in southeast Nebraska on October 27 for a new record price. You may recall a few weeks ago that land was sold in Iowa for $26,250/acre.
What did the land in Richardson County, Nebraska go for?
Answer at the bottom of the email.
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Investments Beefing Up Meat and Poultry Processing |
Maksymenko Nataliia from Getty Images
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The Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) is getting packed with its first round of investment: $73M in 21 grant projects.
The goal is to increase competition and lower costs for families by expanding meat and poultry processing capacity.
In addition, more cold, hard cash is getting invested through the Meat and Poultry Intermediary Lending Program and the Food Supply Chain Guaranteed Loan program. That’s $223M in all to help combat food inflation.
The meats deets: These investments are part of the $1B in American Rescue Plan funding President Biden announced in January.
The USDA is making progress toward the program’s goals:
- Supporting producer-focused business models
- Strengthening Local and Regional Food Systems
- Reducing barriers to processing
- Competing at scale
- Restoring jobs in rural places
- Empowering family-owned businesses
Soundbite: "We're excited about these projects," Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack said on a call Tuesday with reporters. "We think it's going to expand capacity of beef, pork, and mixed processing by over 500K head a year, and we think it will expand capacity in poultry of nearly 34M birds a year."
And there’s more where that came from. Soon, the USDA will take applications for a new phase that will process another $225M for independent processing plant projects.
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$27,400/acre. Tract 1 with 116.07 acres sold for $27,400/acre, while Tract 2 with 163.07 acres sold for $14,400/acre. This brought the total to about $5.5M for almost 280 acres. The farm was purchased by a local farmer for corn and soybean production.
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Written & Edited by Sheridan Wimmer, Kevin Cross, Rachel Robinson, Amelia VanLandegen, Ashley Scoby, and Travis Martin
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