🐷 EATS Act Is Coming + Autonomous Agronomy, Container Cluster, and more...

Good morning.

If you’ve been waiting in suspense all weekend, here’s the podium breakdown from our College of Ag Olympics social media showdown. We can hear the ‘Go Pokes!’ chant already…

Gold: Oklahoma State
Silver: Kentucky
Bronze: Virginia Tech

Thanks to all those who joined in the fun.

Today's news:

EATS Act on the Menu
Agronomy Goes Autonomous
Container Conundrum Continues

P.S. We’re swapping up our partner program, making it easier than ever to get your brand in front of Magnetic's 6K+ readers. For more info, head here.

Iowa senators are out to save producers’ bacon… literally.

Republicans Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley are co-sponsoring the Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act to oppose Prop 12, the California Farm Animal Confinement Proposition.

Refresher: Prop 12 mandates pork sourced from breeding pigs or immediate offspring of breeding pigs “confined in a cruel manner” can’t be sold in California. The proposition defines “cruel manner” as having “less than 24 square feet of usable floor space per pig,” and is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2022.

The EATS Act comes after the North American Meat Institute filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court that challenged the constitutionality of Prop 12, and 20 states filed an amicus curiae brief supporting that petition.

The deets of the EATS: The act would keep each state from impeding the agricultural production and manufacturing of other states. In other words? Each state has to mind its own business.

It’s consistent with the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which says the federal government (not other states) regulates interstate commerce.

According to the Associated Press, only 4% of hog operations currently comply with the new rule, and California currently consumes 15% of supply. Something doesn’t quite add up, which means Californians might not be bringing home the bacon for much longer if Prop 12 stands.

Quick Hits

→ JBS’s surprise catch. The global meat company is spending $546M to snatch up Australia’s second-largest aquaculture-based salmon producer, Huon Aquaculture.

→ Fueling the Benson Hill rocket. The food tech startup is launching the Benson Hill Food Systems Innovators Program to collaborate with leading farmers to evaluate its technologies in commercial production environments.

→ ‘Where’s all the Chardonnay?’ Frost and heavy rains are leaving French winemakers in a bad state, with the country now expecting 24-30% less output than 2020.

→ Egypt’s bread battle. For the first time in 44 years, Egypt is considering raising the price of subsidized bread, a costly move for the region’s poorest who have depended on the loaves for survival since the 1960s.

→ Found a buyer. Poultry producer Sanderson Farms will be acquired for $4.53B by Cargill and Continental Grain.

→ Ag Earnings Palooza:

Bayer took global ag sales up 10.6%
Land O' Lakes thanks dairy demand for a 9% net sales spike
Cargill cashed in on the most profitable year in its 156-year existence

AgroScout, armed with $7.5M in Series A investment funds, is putting autonomous agronomy on the fast track.

Or should we say, flight path.

The Israel-based startup is developing an AI platform that brings sustainable and data-backed farming to growers of all sizes and locations.

How it works: Using autonomous off-the-shelf drones and cell phones, AgroScout monitors crops throughout the season for pests and disease. Better infestation detection means early, reduced, and effective treatment.

It also captures stand counts, canopy coverage, and plant biomass estimates. Data is collected and GPS tagged. Then, analytics—through AI cloud computing and five interlaced data layers—target yield loss.

The drone + platform solution can scan 50 acres in less than 20 minutes on autopilot, while the agronomist sits back until the data comes in. It’s safe to say crop scouting just got sweeter.

The why: The uniquely low-cost, easy-to-use solution could reach nearly all of the 500 million underserved farms around the world. The ultimate goal is an affordable path to sustainable and environmentally-friendly supply chains.

Zoom out: Potatoes are the world’s number-four crop, so AgroScout is focusing there first. There are applications for other field crops, though, and growers can get on the platform through an annual subscription.

Headline on repeat: The U.S. is (still) facing a bit of a container conundrum.

Too many imports, not enough exports, and as a result, the country is in a real container shortage.

How we got here: Early in the pandemic, when demand for goods dropped, shipping lines canceled many of their routes between Asia and the U.S. When demand picked up in summer 2020, thousands of containers were trapped in the U.S., while exporters in China waited for them.

But that was just the beginning: It’s hard to forget the ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March, for example, that delayed the transport of 20,000 shipping containers. May brought the shutdown of a port in Southern China that left 350,000 empty containers stranded in U.S. and European ports.

Plus this: Railyards and truck terminals are backed up, so boxes take longer to make it to the coasts. And there’s a shortage of labor to handle the boxes.

The cluster of issues nationwide has impaired food, ag, and forestry exports the rest of the world needs: “We've had customers in Asia that have had to stop their operations waiting for supply," Bob Sinner, a specialty soybean producer in North Dakota, said.

And you may remember... More than 70 agricultural associations wrote a joint letter to President Biden on February 24, 2021, with a critical plea for assistance.

In the near term, the outlook isn’t exactly sunny: Union Pacific and BNSF railroads announced they were temporarily suspending intermodal train service between their respective container railyards in Chicago and the West Coast.

Supply chain challenges like this one are likely to last through 2021.