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Plus: Movers & Shakers with Britany Wondercheck of Farm Girl Next Door
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October 12, 2021
Magnetic
TOGETHER WITH:
CubicFarms
Good morning.

The colorful fall foliage gracing many of us this time of year led our team to discover this uber interesting forestry fact...

Leaf colors are actually yellow, orange, and red all year long. The green is just a temporary mask made of chlorophyll that’s present for most of the year.

Can you be-leaf it?

Today's hits:

  • Foreign Flags on U.S. Farmland
  • Busted Pumpkin Inventory?
  • Pluton Snags $6M for Microbes


P.S. Final details for the Magnetic Meet-Up are set for Thursday, October 28 at National FFA Convention. RSVP here.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to keep checking out all the jobs (or post your own!) on the Magnetic Ag Job Board.

FARMLAND

Foreign Flags on U.S. Farmland
Flags Farmland
GIPHY
Is it old news yet that around 40% of farmland is owned by non-operators who are non-local investors like Bill Gates?

More than a hop, skip, and a jump away: A small portion (approx. 3%) of that non-local ownership is actually non-domestic.

Where the numbers land:

  • Foreign investors own about 35.2M acres of farmland.
  • That’s enough acreage to fill up the state of Iowa.
  • And it’s worth about $63B.
  • Canadian investors own about 29%.


Other foreign farmland investors are in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and China.

Booming foreign farmland grab: Between 2009 and 2019 the amount of farmland owned by non-U.S. entities grew 60%, according to USDA data.

Don’t like the sound of that? Some of your congressional representatives don’t either.

In July, the U.S. House passed an ag appropriations bill that included Rep. Dan Newhouse’s (R-WA) amendment blocking ag purchases by companies affiliated with the Chinese government.

And just this month, Texas reps Ronny Jackson (R) and Filemon Vela (D) tabled the Foreign Adversary Risk Management (FARM) Act, which would require the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to monitor foreign investment into the ag industry and add the Ag Secretary as a member. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) introduced the Senate companion bill.

Take it back now, y’all: To keep land in the hands of people who live and work on it, American Farmland Trust (along with other land-use groups) is advocating for changes to capital gains tax policy that would incentivize selling land to individual owners, including qualified beginner farmers.

Quick Hits

→ Kubota gobbles up precision tech player. The tractor maker purchased AgJunction for $72M to boost their capabilities in advanced guidance, autosteering, and autonomy solutions.

→ Bayer puts Mexico on blast. The crop input giant is seeking legal options as the country’s health regulators denied a GMO corn permit for the first time ever.

→ Pork line speeds to speed up? Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack revealed the USDA is working on a waiver for plants to resume faster processing line speeds if they meet certain worker safety conditions.

→ Farmland price record-setting on repeat. Another Iowa auction proved the demand for farm ground, as a 76-acre parcel sold for $26,000/acre, a new record.

→ Some sketch cattle purchases. A 2020 audit revealed that JBS SA, the world's largest meatpacker, bought nearly a third of their cattle from ranches with "irregularities" such as illegal deforestation activities.

→ Pork rescue mission in China. The country’s commerce ministry purchased 30,000 tonnes of pork for reserves to help domestic farmers who experienced heavy losses after plunging pork prices.

SPECIALTY CROPS

A Halloween Pumpkin Hunt?
Pumpkins
GIPHY
The 2021 pumpkin crop is spookier than ever.

But it’s not because of super-scary carvings everyone is posting to Insta.

Yep, you guessed it: There could be a shortage.

And yes—COVID is partially to blame. In some areas the supply chain challenges that have plagued literally everyone are creating backlogs in distributing pumpkins. Other areas have found labor hard to find, like so many other businesses in the past year.

But in the case of pumpkins, there are other factors that could leave some wondering where all the orange is this fall.

Farms in California have faced drought, leaving some with smaller harvests. In other areas of the country, like North Carolina, conditions have been too wet through the spring and summer months.

There’s also this: Illinois produces 80-90% of the total U.S. pumpkin crop, and farmers in the state are seeing high levels of fungus destroying otherwise good-looking pumpkins. Those in the state are predicting the real effects of a shortage might come at Thanksgiving—when demand for canned pumpkin spikes for the year.

Commodity Corner
Commodity Corner
Grains: Today's USDA reports are highly anticipated for crop conditions and harvest progress. Soybeans took a dip as China purchases seem to have possibly dried up for the time being.

Livestock: Quiet day for cattle while hog prices continue to fluctuate with China's domestic price situation.

*As of Market Close [10/11/21]
MOVERS & SHAKERS SERIES

Britany Wondercheck of Farm Girl Next Door
Britany Wondercheck
Britany Wondercheck didn’t get her entrepreneurial chops from agriculture as one might think of a farm girl raised in northeast Nebraska. In fact, the Farm Girl Next Door found her footing early on when she started a cake and cupcake decorating business in high school.

And the rest, they say, is history.

Between churning out her grain marketing courses and content, plus leading business development for meat processing tech company Marble Technologies, Britany has got her hands full. But that’s not all. She lives and farms with her husband in the same county she grew up in.

Magnetic caught up with the busy Farm Girl Next Door to hear about all the work she’s up to and what she does in her free time. Read the Q&A here.
SPONSORED BY CUBICFARMS

Get Amped
Amplified
An astronaut, ag-tech experts, and 900+ people will be there—will you?

CubicFarms is inviting Magnetic readers to
the highly anticipated 1-hour virtual CubicFarms AMPLIFIED event on Thursday, October 21. Powerhouse guest speakers astronaut Chris Hadfield, sustainability expert Henry Gordon-Smith, and leaders in the agriculture industry will reveal how new technologies can solve the most urgent concerns of our time.

Globally, we’re experiencing severe drought, heatwaves, food insecurity, and disruptions to the supply chain. Innovative local chain ag-tech enables farmers to keep growing sustainably. See the latest commercial scale indoor growing farming technologies available today and get an exclusive look at what’s next for the future of farming.

AGTECH

Pluton Raises Millions for Microbes
Pluton Biosciences is today’s microbe sleuth and they just raised $6.6M in seed money to take their operation to the next level.

The natural product development company is devoted to unearthing new microbes to help combat climate change and replace man-made chemicals with environmentally friendly microbial products.

Their high-throughput microbial discovery platform identifies and isolates unique organisms within months, boosting research and development performance for AgTech.

Soundbite: “There are a trillion species of microbes, and we only use a couple of them,” said Barry Goldman, Pluton Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. “We’re trying to use that huge reservoir of biodiversity out there to solve big problems. Nature spent 2 billion years trying to solve them, so let’s let nature tell us the answer.”

Mosquito mission: One example of the company's biotech solution served the company's own leadership. Goldman and Pluton CEO Steve Slater wanted to find a natural pesticide for mosquitoes. “It was actually pretty straightforward—we literally did it in months, and they came out of Barry’s backyard,” Slater said.

Refer & Rewards

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Just for Fun

We’re swapping out today’s trivia with a PSA on one interesting fall festival in Idaho.

The Trailing of the Sheep Festival is a must-see where 1,500 sheep strut through the town of Ketchum in honor of the historical migration they normally made from high mountain pastures to lower valleys for winter grazing.

What a sight.

Sheep Strut
Written by: Savanna Barksdale, Daniel Bechman, Travis Martin
Editor: Ashley Scoby



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