🌧 Prayin' for Rain + SeaFeed, Cocoa Supply Crash, and more...

“We need divine intervention.”

That was Governor Spencer Cox recently asking Utahns to pray for rain as exceptional drought conditions grip his state.

Basically, it’s bad. Like, really bad.

But it’s not only the Salt Lake that’s gradually shrinking. Dry weather is gripping nearly the entire West, with 'exceptional' drought conditions plaguing huge chunks of the Southwest.

Shrinking reservoirs in California are posing a major threat to crop irrigation, and dry soil conditions are concerning across the Northern Plains.

But the big story is North Dakota.

A soundbite: "We seeded into dry, hard dirt, hoping the seed would lay until it rained, but the rain has never come," noted Tyler Stafslien, a farmer from Makoti, ND.

With the Peace Garden State enduring ultra-high temps and its lowest amount of moisture in decades, farmers are in a really bad way.

With no hope of a second crop, and very little hope of a harvest at all, some farmers are running cattle out into the fields or simply abandoning what were once their wheat fields.

As it’s still early in the season, most market watchers didn’t expect the drought woes to have much effect on the USDA’s estimates released in yesterday’s WASDE report. But by next month, the impact of the dry conditions will be more evident…

Where this goes: On the bright side, the drought monitor maps did not expand last week. But with mixed reviews as to what Mother Nature has in store for the summer, producers (and the markets) are waiting to see what happens next.

→ $11 million: The total amount JBS reportedly paid the ransomware hacking crew, REvil, when the gang breached computer networks over the Memorial Day weekend.

→ A different vax in the news. The Swine Health Information Center estimates that a commercial vaccine for African Swine Fever could be available as early as next year.

→ Corn growers get ambitious. The National Corn Growers Association released its first Sustainability Report with new goals for the coming decade, including reducing soil erosion by 13% and increasing irrigation water use efficiency by 15%.

→ The water war. The EPA announced its intent to repeal the Trump-era Navigable Waters Protection Rule and will be working to define a broader, “durable definition” of which waterways, wetlands, and more can be protected.

→ Boosting that agronomic tech stack. Minneapolis-based startup Sentera announced its $25 million Series C funding to grow the digital platform for agronomists looking to integrate remote sensing, analytics, and IoT insights.

→ Nutrien is an overachiever. The ag retail king and fertilizer giant revealed that it doubled its pilot carbon program goal of 100,000 acres in North America: they’ve instead enrolled 200,000 acres, as they work to monetize carbon assets and credits.

→ Peppered out. Vietnam industry leaders are encouraging farmers to rotate away from black pepper crop expansion to avoid a global oversupply scenario.

The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s feed rations.

A new startup out of Sweden, Volta Greentech, is raising money ($2.07 million so far) to construct a facility that will produce seaweed with hopes to reduce methane emissions from Swedish cattle.

Algae philosophy: While the talk of using seaweed as cow feed isn’t necessarily a new concept, there’s a specific strain of algae showing a lot of potential in reducing cows’ carbon footprint.

The red Asparagopsis taxiformis variety has shown an impressive reduction in cattle methane emissions – as much as 80% – by blocking enzymes that produce methane in the rumen.

Low-carbon cows: The beef and dairy sectors are saying, “We sea you. And we like you.” They’re hoping to utilize the seaweed feed supplement, which would allow them to market their products as “low carbon.”

The seaweed factory: The seaweed production facility will commercially launch the supplement Volta Seafeed later this year, the first time it’ll be produced at scale.

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Life is like a box of chocolates…and the Ivory Coast really didn’t know what it was going to get.

This year’s rainy season has been unusually dry for the past month, and it’s threatening the April-to-September cocoa mid-crop. The heavy downpours that normally characterize April to mid-November in this region are nowhere to be found, dampening farmers’ hopes for the crop. In fact, last week’s rainfall in the city of Soubre was 46.2 mm below the region’s five-year average, according to Reuters data.

In other regions, rainfall was equally MIA.

Why does the Ivory Coast cocoa matter so much? Well, the country produces about 40% of the world’s cocoa beans. And it’s not just this year’s crop in jeopardy: The dry spell could also spell a delayed crop next year.

Big picture: The world eats a lot of chocolate, to say the least (worldwide production averages about 4.7 million tons per year). But cocoa is also the Ivory Coast’s largest export, and the industry employs more than 6 million people.

The silver lining is the Ivory Coast has discovered an innovative way to utilize more of the cocoa plant. What would normally be waste is turned into renewable fuel — which not only helps produce electricity, but also sparks a new revenue stream for the 600,000 cocoa farmers in the country.

That news, at least, is pretty sweet.