Good morning.
Eat your veggies... but check them for drugs first??
In a new (to us, at least) twist on drug smuggling, U.S. Customs & Border Protection dug into a shipment of carrots in San Diego... and found $3M worth of methamphetamine inside.
After a canine officer first detected that something was amiss, officers found 628 packages of meth hidden within the carrots.
Now that's the ag version of Breaking Bad we never knew we needed.
Stories:
- Calffeine Treatment
- Sound Funding for Sound Agriculture
- Midwest Cover Crop Adoption Increasing
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Ah, caffeine. It’s hard to start the day without it coursing through your veins and stimulating your brain. Just us? Probably not: the average adult drinks the equivalent of a cup and a half of coffee a day.
But it turns out that java jolt has potential on cattle operations, too. And we don’t mean for the ranchers themselves.
Jump start: Caffeine can treat oxygen deprivation in struggling calves. That deprivation can stem from difficult birth, excessive cold, or illnesses like scours. For newborn calves, lack of oxygen can prevent full absorption of colostrum’s beneficial contents and reduce passive immunity transfer.
Caffeine’s effects hit full-force and fast because it’s absorbed through the mouth (in bovines and humans).
A 5-hour ENERGY, or similar bottled energy shot, can help calves well beyond the first five hours. Producers can also look for supplements that include caffeine to improve alertness and vigor.
Soundbitesip: "At minimum, this can help get them onto their feet and nursing, and could even save their lives. At the same time, this can save a producer an unquantifiable amount of angst, and potentially a lot of money," said Nathan Upah, rumen technical leader with Techmix.
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→ Cornucopia. Mexico is set to ban genetically modified corn imported from the U.S.—but the deadline has been postponed until 2025, so Mexico can clarify what the decree will actually mean in practice.
→ Ag committee has its guy. Glenn "GT" Thompson has officially been elected as chairman of the House Ag Committee, where he’s served as a member for more than 10 years.
→ Meating demand. Pork exports reached their highest levels in 16 months (up 5% from last year), while beef exports are up 8% from year-ago levels.
→ Add your approval, please. A group of more than a dozen senators are asking the FDA to approve certain feed additives that could lower carbon emissions from livestock.
→ CropIn bringing money in. CropIn, a startup that provides an SaaS-based agritech platform to help digitize operations and improve decision-making at farm-to-fork businesses, raised $14M, including investment from Google.
→ Awesome automation. CNH Industrial hope to increase farmers’ productivity with its newest automation and autonomy solutions, including driver assist harvesting, driverless tillage, baling automation, and more.
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Sound Funding for Sound Agriculture |
Sound Agriculture just found sound $75M in Series D funding. That money will broaden its Nutrient Efficiency and On-Demand Breeding business lines.
The Nutrient Efficiency line includes SOURCE ®, which "activates the soil microbiome via biochemistry foliar spray and signals to existing soil microbes to increase nitrogen fixation and phosphorus solubilization." That’s a lot of big words to say it can reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer in corn by up to 50 pounds per acre. Nice!
During the last two years, Sound has signed partnerships with more than 12 food and ag companies to reduce spoilage, boost nutrition, and more in crops including potatoes, yellow peas, tomatoes, corn, soybeans, and wheat.
Founded in 2013, Sound Agriculture has replaced "up to 30% of climate damaging synthetic fertilizer, breeding tastier, healthier, and more sustainable crops." It’s raised a total of $155M since then to create nature-based solutions for sustainable food production.
Growing faster than the speed of sound… or close to it. The company has seen crazy-fast adoption of its SOURCE product since its launch in 2020. This past year brought 4.3 times the growth with products used on more than 1M U.S. acres.
SOURCE has minimized nitrogen fertilizer use–sometimes replacing these fertilizers completely, other times they were used to increase yields where farms had productive nitrogen fertilizer management in place.
Soundbite: "We're committed to fighting a trifecta of issues that include food insecurity, environmental damage, and poor health—all of which are addressable with the right technology and practices," said Sound Agriculture CEO Adam Litle.
Sounds about right: By 2030, the company plans to reduce more than 100 megatons of CO2 and eliminate 4B pounds of nitrates from hitting waterways.
Next year, SOURCE will expand internationally with availability for wheat, cotton, alfalfa, hay, and canola, plus corn and soybeans.
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Innovation has always been at the heart of farming.
Dreaming, inventing, and experimenting with new tools, equipment, and products is what allows farmers to continue improving their operations.
And if there’s any company at the forefront of helping farmers for the future, it’s Beck’s.
That’s exactly why the largest family-owned retail seed company in the United States launched its Practical Farm Research (PFR)® program.
With 400 studies across 700+ acres, PFR evaluates hundreds of new management practices and inputs, delivering unbiased agronomic data to help farmers make better decisions and increase profitability.
So, do you want in on all the intel, the know-how, the knowledge…?
Reserve your spot for an upcoming PFR Insight Meeting today.
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Availability of caloric sweeteners these days? Not so sweet. From 1999 to 2021, caloric sweeteners available for consumption fell 17%—including a significant drop in availability of total corn sweeteners.
How much sugar did the average American consume in 2021?
Answer at the bottom of the email.
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Midwest Cover Crop Adoption Increasing |
mvburling from Getty Images
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Cover crops are covering quite a bit of ground these days: In the Midwest in 2021, cover crop adoption reached 7.9%. A decade ago, that number was just 1.8%.
The University of Illinois has been tracking cover crops for the past 20 years through satellite-based remote sensing across 140M acres.
After analyzing the results, the University of Illinois determined a statistically significant driver of cover crop planting was more state and federal incentive programs. When cover crops increased, cover crop assistance programs were saying, "We’ll be there for you."
Laying the groundwork: Cover crops are usually grass or small grains like cereal rye, winter wheat, or oats that reduce erosion, help suppress weeds, improve water quality, and promote soil health.
Cover crops can help dry out wet fields, provide more nutrients to the soil, and even increase future crop yields, according to the USDA.
Getting started? The Midwest Cover Crop Council has a Cover Crop Decision Tool to help farmers decide how to move forward with cover crops. It’s location specific and based on 30 years of climate data and weather patterns.
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127.3 pounds (vs. 153.6 pounds in 1999). The reasons: shifting consumer and food manufacturer preferences, high corn prices, and competition with other caloric sweeteners.
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Written & Edited by Kelsey Faivre, Amelia VanLandegen, Rachel Robinson, and Ashley Scoby
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