🦟 The West's Insect Issue + Ag Data Watch Dogs, German's Pork Probz, and more...

Good morning.

Most of you, our readers, come from traditional row crop or livestock backgrounds, with a few exceptions. One of those outliers happens to be one energetic cranberry farmer...

Yep, we’re talking about Miss #crAMBERryChats, Amber Bristow. Featured in today’s ‘Movers & Shakers’ slot, she’ll dish on interesting facts about cranberries, what it’s like to be part of the Ocean Spray co-op, and her hope for #Cranbabe, the potential sixth generation farm member. Read the Q&A here.

Today’s stories:

The West's Insect Issue
Germany's Pork Problems
Ag Data Watch Dogs

The Western U.S. is facing a drought dilemma of biblical proportions: grasshopper plagues.

In large swaths of Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming, as well as some areas of Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Nebraska, the native insects are appearing on the heels of a dry planting season. Grasshoppers and drought go together like PB&J, so the insects are having a hey hayday.

Not seen by some growers since the mid-1980s, grasshoppers attack rangeland and crop fields. They chew through tender plants, leaves, and grain heads, and are a competitor for livestock forage on public lands, where ranchers have no easy back up plans for the damaged food supply.

No small issue: Populations of 14 grasshoppers per square yard - totaling the weight of a sheep - become a problem. They can eat their bodyweight in forage each day, leading to a $900M impact from a typical infestation. This year, populations are reaching 50-60 grasshoppers per square yard.

Taking care of business: This week, the USDA began spraying diflubenzuron in hard-hit Montana to kill nymphs. Conservationists are concerned about impacts to other insects in the treated area. But officials say their skip-a-swath approach protects slower moving insects while targeting the far-traveling grasshoppers.

Where this goes: Without killing nymphs, the outbreak will peak in roughly two months when the 2-3 inch-long insects will be able to out-eat cattle. They’ll die out when they run out of forage - and likely after they’ve laid next year’s eggs.

Quick Hits

→ $430M in the bank for Pivot Bio. The startup looking to replace traditional synthetic nitrogen products bagged the cash in its recent Series D funding after revenue 3x in 2021 so far.

→ Glyphosate surge sees no end in sight. Exports of the popular herbicide hit new 10-year highs with prices out of China reaching $8K per ton.

→ River issues in Argentina. The country’s government will dedicate $10.4M to ease trade-related and drinking water issues with the Parana River — at its lowest level in 77 years due to ongoing drought.

→ Bird flock tech. Cargill and Intelia have partnered to scale precision livestock tools that help producers monitor and manage broiler flocks.

→ It will just be a slight prick… The USDA approved blood swabs and spots to test for African Swine Fever to aid in surveillance programs during foreign animal disease investigations.

→ More green = more green. JBS USA executives have got green on the mind as the company announced variable compensation ties to sustainability and environmental metrics.

→ Pork for pennies in China. Domestic Chinese hog prices have plummeted 50% as the country’s herd rebounds from African Swine Fever. With prices cratering domestically, China’s demand for overseas pork will also tank: projected imports are expected to slide ~50% in the second half of 2021.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before.

African Swine Fever (ASF) is stirring up panic in the pork world.

Some viruses just won’t take a hint.

How it started: Germany has been doing everything it can to keep infections out of its hog herd. They went as far as building fences along their border in an attempt to keep infected wild boars in Poland. But last September, the game changed when the first cases of ASF were confirmed in wild animals.

Amidst its own recovery from the devastating impact of the virus, China took the news of wild German boars with ASF hard. They, among other Asian nations, immediately banned imports of German pork.

How it’s going: Germany is the newest addition to the list of countries that have now found ASF in farm-raised pigs. Two farms were confirmed to have the virus last Friday: one an organic farm of about 200 pigs, the second a small farm with only two pigs.

Most in the German pork industry do not see the news as all that concerning. They point to the fact that they have already been limited on export options, thanks to the ban on exports to Asian nations. And the EU is expected to maintain their regionalization approach to restricting trade within its borders.

We see it happen all the time in agriculture.

Succession planning. Wealthy investors. Life events.

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Magnetic's Must-See Stuff

Snag the grassland dough. Farmers and landowners can now apply to the Conservation Reserve Program (Grasslands) to get annual payments for setting aside ground for environmental purposes.

Fendt, farm work, and… Luke Bryan. Who would Luke pick for his celebrity farmhand? Hear his answer from the cab of his Fendt 724 Vario and more in the ‘Rise Before Sunrise’ YouTube series.

40+ applications have dropped for new gigs on the Magnetic Ag Job Board. Go check ‘em out.

Who’s watching your farm data?

A better question for farmers might be... who isn’t watching your data?

And could NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) be the solution? NFTs allow people to purchase and own “original'' data content and are based on blockchain technology. They’re entirely unique and have software code consisting of smart contracts: once one is minted onto a token on the blockchain, it’s permanent.

In an agricultural setting, this means an AgTech company would attach an NFT to a specific dataset that would be uploaded to its servers and could create a single dataset for its farmer-data-originators. Any copies made of this data would violate the owner’s permission.

Backstory: Currently, there’s not much oversight in place to look out for farmers and how their data is used. At this point, Ag Data Transparent (ADT) is the only organization doing that work.

“ADT certifies companies that commit to be transparent about how they collect, store, use, share, and delete farmers’ ag data.” And they have certified almost 30 AgTech and ag industry legacy companies in a few years.

Who’s behind this ADT? A few farmer-trusted organizations including the National Farm Bureau, National Farmers Union, and national commodity organizations.

The bottom-line: “Datasets that work for farmers need to be created,” said Bill Northey, the USDA’s Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation. More than anything? Farmers need to feel comfortable knowing who has access to their data.