Good morning.

While we're still recovering from our busy birthday week and wiping the icing from our faces, we're grateful to our reader community who spread the word about Magnetic last week.

We'll be inking a $168 check to our friends at Feeding America for all the new readers who joined us! 👏🏼

Hot topics:

• Soybeans Clear for Landing
• A Blasts for Chloroplasts
• Smithfield Foods Stays Busy

A quick programming note: The Magnetic team will be off Friday to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. See you back here in a week!

Soybean farmers may soon get to see their beans’ demand take flight. With the Biden administration’s goal to decrease aviation emissions 20% by 2030, biofuels will be soy popular.

“Aviation is the clearest opportunity for biofuels to have impact,” says Valerie Sarisky-Reed, acting director of the Bioenergy Technologies Office. “We’re seeing unprecedented interest in finding alternatives to fossil-based fuels, which is helping drive demand for these fuels.”

Taxiing on soybeans: Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is the common term used for non-petroleum jet fuel, and can come from wood residue, animal fats, algae, cooking/vegetable oil, sugars/alcohol, ethanol, and greases. Southwest Airlines, Delta, JetBlue and United are airlines making commitments to these bio-based fuels.

Wheels up for soy: The increased demand for soy’s oil means an increase of around 30M more acres of soybean within a few years. That’s not sitting well with some environmental groups, who argue the increased demand causes land to be cleared in the U.S. and in other countries.

Skyrocketing oil production: On average, a bushel of soybeans makes 10.7 lbs. of crude soy oil, and 47.5 lbs. of meal. Experts predict many will want those numbers to be flipped soon and say soybean oil could make up 70% of the total demand for renewable diesel and SAF.

Beans, beans, the magical fuel.

Another day, another innovative crop technology funding announcement.

With $7.1M in the bank, biotech startup Plastomics has finalized a Series A funding round. The company helps develop higher performing seeds for agriculture with their chloroplast trait delivery platform.

It’s a blast for chloroplasts. Plastomics has engineering technology that delivers traits to a plant’s chloroplast instead of its nucleus. The result? Improved crops and yields. The company is currently testing the benefits of soybean trait chloroplast transformation from laboratory to field and is working on completing the chloroplast transformation trait proof of concept in corn.

From the CEO: “In order to take that from the laboratory to the greenhouse and ultimately to the field, takes people and money,” Martha Schlicher said.

“We really needed to increase the size of the team and build into our planning the experiments that we need to do to show, first of all, that the platform is performing, and secondly, that the platform can deliver traits in a better way via the chloroplast than via the nucleus.”

Hoping to see green. Schlicher said she hopes to see growers and seed companies take interest in the company. She went on to say that seed companies will be key collaborators and could end up acquiring the technology.

Hot off the press… Canada halted exports of fresh potatoes from Prince Edward Island to the United States this week. Which reason below stopped exports in their tracks?

• Flooding stopped all product movement off the island
• Concerns over spreading ‘potato wart fungus’ that was found in the crop
• Record low production forced Canada to retain supplies for domestic demand

FDA rule changes continue to roll out, and farms of all sizes are scrambling to implement end-to-end traceability for the food supply chain.

Enter Fusionware - the cloud-based farm management software that goes above and beyond all FDA traceability guidelines.

In as little as 1 week, start tracing all crops through every step of the process.

The benefits are top-notch:

• Integrates easily: Track all supply chain touchpoints in one powerful and intuitive platform.
• Modular design: Pay for what you need, not for what you don't. The onboarding team can find the right package for your team.
• Grows with you: With month-to-month pricing and flexible plans, you can start using 100% traceability without a six-figure investment.

There’s no time like the present. Get started with Fusionware today.

Go for the gold job. Looking to make a pivot to a new type of career? Want to explore new opportunities? Well, there’s no better place to look than the Magnetic Ag Job Board.

We need your help, readers. We’re trying to peg the most beloved boot brand in ag and rural America. Take our quick poll, and we’ll share the results.

News out of Smithfield Foods is a bit of a mixed bag these days.

On one hand: As of this week, Smithfield agreed to settle a citation claiming the company failed to protect its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, meatpacking employees from COVID-19 exposure last year. And since Smithfield is settling without admitting any wrongdoing, the settlement can’t be “used or admitted in evidence in any proceeding or litigation” by affected workers.

And that's not all.

Smithfield Foods is embroiled in a family feud between the father and son, owner and former executive, respectively, of the parent company WH Group, the world’s largest pork processor. This family feud has already cost WH Group millions in market value and dredged up potentially damaging accusations.

On the flip side: Smithfield launched a new farmers program with the goal of supporting new opportunities for minority farmers by removing barriers like access to and cost of capital. And it’s a $15M investment with the goal to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in food manufacturing, agriculture, and education.