Good morning!
No matter who you rooted for on Super Bowl Sunday, I think there is one thing we all can get behind: cheese.
And you’d probably be glad to know there’s a March Madness of the cheese variety taking place in Madison, Wisconsin just next month. With 53 international experts evaluating nearly 3,000 dairy products, the 2022 World Championship Cheese Contest is bound to amaze some taste buds.
If volunteer judges are needed, we’re available. Just sayin’.
Stories:
- Tyson Gets Beef for Big Earnings
- Almond Delight: Bees on Pollination Patrol
- Bird Flu Is Blitzing
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Tyson Gets Beef for Big Earnings |
Demand in the meat market has Tyson turning top dollar, according to their first-quarter earnings report.
But with operating income up 40% in the first quarter, Tyson finds themselves walking a fine line between shareholder success and government scrutiny.
Something to cluck about. This quarter, Tyson saw:
- Shares increase 12% to $99.20
- Average sales price increase 19.6% compared to the same period last year
- Chicken alone had 37% higher sales year over year
- Transportation, grain costs, and other goods cost increase 18%
Not to mention: Total sales were up 23.6% year over year to $12.9B, yet sales volume increased by less than 1%. John Tyson, the man himself, saw the stock surge raise his net worth to $3.3B.
Sound bite: "…in an economy where both wage growth and supply chain bottlenecks are driving inflation, businesses that sell things that people want cannot only deal with the higher costs, but thrive from them," said Jamie Powell of the Financial Times.
That luck is self-made, according to Tyson representatives who say better execution coupled with rising meat demand has delivered.
Catch-22: Tyson’s announcement exceeded expectations, a good sign for investors. On the flip side, their financial results seem to play into the hands of those who believe meatpackers are "pandemic profiteering" or using industry consolidation as a pricing advantage to the detriment of farmers and consumers.
Meat manipulation: Tyson and JBS have both recently settled in price-fixing class action lawsuits. And the Biden administration has announced plans to spend $1B and create new rules to address a lack of competition in the meatpacking industry. The steaks are high with these financial results.
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→ An avocado assault? The U.S. halted avocado imports from the Michoacán region of Mexico after a U.S. plant-safety inspector received a threatening phone call.
→ Cattle are ticked off. Now found in 17 states, the Asian longhorn tick has swept across the country in only four years and can cause economic losses by sickening dairy and beef cattle.
→ Farm carbon goes web3. Estonia-based startup eAgronom will use its $7.4M Series A funding to expand carbon tracking and launch a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to help farmers finance CO2 sequestration.
→ Glyphosate gossip. A manufacturing failure at a Bayer glyphosate plant could take three months to fix, creating more supply issues for the popular active ingredient.
→ Russia reelin’ in seafood sanctions. New legislation was introduced to ban the import of all Russian seafood products into the U.S.
→ EPA’s pest-y lawsuit. The American Farm Bureau Federation, along with other state and national farm groups, has sued to block the EPA from prohibiting the use of chlorpyrifos on food crops.
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Better Bee Ready: Early Almond Blossom in California |
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
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An early almond bloom has California growers buzzing with anticipation.
And each year the state has to import over 2M beehives to help with the monumental pollination effort and add to the 500,000 hives residing in California year-round.
Bee basics: Bees are a critical part of the almond production process. The majority of CA almond tree varieties are self-incompatible, meaning that each blossom requires cross-pollination with another variety to produce an almond.
Soundbite: "With the boom in almond planting, demand has skyrocketed and more hives have had to be imported. On the flip side, it is challenging to increase hive supply in California due to the state's Mediterranean climate, which limits the availability of floral resources in the summer and fall," noted Jacob Wenger, assistant professor of entomology at California State University, Fresno.
Some nutty stats:
- Almonds are California’s #2 agricultural crop at $5.9B in farmgate value.
- A honeybee hive has on average 20,000 - 80,000 bees living in a colony.
- Estimated cost of an eight frame hive for almond growers this year will be between $200 - $220 each.
On the road again. After the almond pollination season concludes around late March, many hives will disperse back across the nation, from Washington to the Upper Midwest, to continue pollination of other crops.
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Grains: Corn had a great Valentine's Day as some speculate it could be a replacement for pricey wheat if there are issues in the Black Sea region.
Livestock: Both cattle and hog market outlooks continue to be strong.
*As of Market Close [2/14/22]
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Magnetic's Must-See Stuff |
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With almonds on the brain and tomorrow being National Almond Day, we thought we’d quiz you on your nut knowledge.
The U.S. is the clear leader in almond production, making up ~80% of global output. But which of the below countries comes in at #2?
Answer at the bottom of the email.
**Win a Magnetic koozie when you submit a trivia question and it gets used in a future newsletter! Submit questions here.
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‘Slow the spread’ might be the New Years resolution that the U.S. poultry industry didn’t know they needed.
Last Wednesday a commercial turkey farm in Indiana reported that they were bird flu positive, causing China, South Korea, and Mexico to immediately ban imports from the state. As a result, nearly 30,000 turkeys were euthanized to prevent further spread.
The flu flight zone: While bird flu isn’t new news on the international stage, the confirmation of the case in Dubois County, Indiana sounds all the alarms domestically as it’s right in the middle of a migratory bird pathway.
This path, the Mississippi Flyway, includes major poultry-producing states including Mississippi, Alabama, and Indiana. It’s likely that the lethal (to birds) H5N1 strain is in flight to the West Coast.
All farms within a 10-km radius of the confirmed cases are quarantined and will undergo weekly testing. While not confirmed, this is upwards of a few hundred thousand additional birds.
Soundbite: "This is a foreign animal disease and shouldn’t be on our landscape," said Denise Derrer Spears of the Indiana State Board of Animal Health. "That flips the switch and makes this a big deal right off the bat, and we need to stamp it out before it gets out of control."
And in breaking news… Yesterday, new positive cases were found in a commercial chicken farm in Kentucky.
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Written by Kelsey Faivre, Aaron Dunajeski, Amelia VanLandegen, and Travis Martin
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P.O. Box 7292
Greenwood, IN 46142-6423
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