Wichita Eagle: Agriculture

Dwindling herds, overseas demand drive up beef prices

Georgina Gustin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:57 CST

For anyone who loves a good steak, a juicy burger or a nice Sunday roast, these are anxious times.

Prices for beef, which have been climbing for months, hit a record high in December — an average of $5 a pound — and analysts predict they could climb 5 to 8 percent higher this year.

Beef prices are soaring for a number of reasons. Producers, who struggled with high feed costs and diminishing profits, began shrinking their herds roughly five years ago. Since then, demand from overseas markets has shot up — a record 11 percent of American beef went overseas last year, up from 8.7 percent in 2010.

Kansas business coalition: Allow illegal immigrants to stay, work

JOHN HANNA — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:11 CST

A coalition of business groups will propose Kansas start a new program to help some illegal immigrants remain in the state so they can hold down jobs in agriculture and other industries with labor shortages, coalition representatives disclosed Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the Washington-based Immigration Policy Council called the proposal unprecedented and questioned whether the federal government would allow such a program, though she was sympathetic toward supporters’ goals. Utah has set up a guest-worker program, but it doesn’t take effect until 2013 and was part of a broader package of initiatives on immigration.

The Kansas proposal also is notable because it complicates the debate over immigration issues in the home state of Kris Kobach, the secretary of state and a former law professor who helped draft tough laws against illegal immigration in Alabama and Arizona.

Kansas farmers claim $1 billion after drought

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:20 CST

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) – Kansas farmers have already claimed a record amount in crop insurance for losses suffered during a lingering drought last year, and the claims are expected to surpass $1 billion, a federal agriculture official said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in its weekly report it had paid $987.3 million to Kansas farmers so far on 6.4 million acres. That total included $20 million paid out in the past week, said Rebecca Davis, director of the department's Risk Management Agency office in Topeka.

“I expect us to reach the $1 billion mark,” she said.

Predictions for 2012: Economy moving in a positive direction

Dan Voorhis — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:09 CST

A year ago, forecasters called for slow economic improvement in the year to come. We got that, along with an incredibly bumpy ride.

Looking out over 2012, experts are again calling for slow improvement in the local, national and global economy, barring a major disaster.

What’s new and improved next year starts with housing.

Number of Texas cows plunges

Molly Hennessy-Fiske — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 07:09 CST

Blame the long-running drought in Texas for the largest single-year decline in the state’s cow herd, which experts say is likely to drive up beef prices.

Since January, the number of cows in Texas is expected to have decreased by about 600,000 — a 12 percent drop from about 5 million cows. That’s according to David Anderson, a livestock economist in College Station who monitors beef markets for the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

The trend is likely the largest drop in the number of cows any state has ever seen, Anderson said. Texas only had a larger percentage decline during the Great Depression.

Farmers worry new labor rules will end teen jobs

JOSH FUNK — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:29 CST

From tending cattle to driving tractors or ATVs, 15-year-old Taylor Muller and her three younger brothers have always done what they could to help the family’s farming business.

“Most kids my age don’t even have jobs,” said Taylor, who assists her father at one southwest Oklahoma farm and her grandparents at another. “We already know what hard work is.”

Many other young kids won’t be allowed to do those kinds of chores if the U.S. Labor Department approves new rules on children working in agriculture. While the Mullers would likely be exempt because it’s a family business, the proposed rules would prohibit most children under age 16 from driving tractors, using power equipment, working with livestock in certain circumstances and doing work at heights over 6 feet.

Rose Hill alpaca ranch has ‘open barn’

Deb Gruver — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:08 CST

Some people might have thought Minuit was having a bad hair day in the Kansas wind Saturday, but this alpaca actually has award-winning hair.

Or fleece, anyway.

The alpaca – just about the same color as a chocolate Labrador – joined her 16 of her camel-esque friends for an “open barn” at the Royal Plush Alpaca Ranch in Rose Hill. The unique take on Small Business Saturday and the Black Friday shopping weekend brought out people curious about the animals, who are the “cute cousin to the llama,” said Mike Green.

Deadline looms in $750 million rice settlement

CHUCK BARTELS — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:22 CST

Rice growers who lost sales after genetically modified rice seed mistakenly entered the U.S. market five years ago have until Monday to sign on to a $750 million settlement proposed by the company blamed for the problem.

More than 10,000 farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas sued the German conglomerate Bayer CropScience after the modified strain of long-grain rice got loose in 2006. The mistake led to lost sales in major markets, such as the European Union, and left many growers with huge losses.

Matthew Davis, a rice grower from Almyra, Ark., is among farmers hoping to settle. He recalled hearing the news that the crop was contaminated and then watching prices plunge.

Kansas group works to turn crop stubble into energy

Dan Voorhis — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:08 CST

Farms have been becoming more like factories for decades. Now, a local nonprofit group wants to take a further step in the automation of agriculture.

The Kansas Alliance for BioRefining and BioEnergy was created in 2009 and was originally funded by the Kansas BioScience Authority to help commercialize research and technology that turns plants into energy and products.

It works behind the cutting edge of research, trying to bridge the gap between leading-edge products and daily practice.

Many local exports show strong gains

DAN VOORHIS — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:29 CST

Many categories of exports important to Wichita and Kansas continue to show strong gains through September, the latest month that figures are available, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Civilian aircraft exports were up about 2 percent in September from August, and is up 8 percent through the first nine months, compared to the same nine months of 2010. Aircraft parts exports were also up about 8 percent through September compared to 2010.

Agricultural exports were up even more, with wheat up 108 percent; the category containing sorghum was up 52 percent; corn was up 39 percent; meat was up 27 percent; and soybeans were up 4 percent.

Wheat on track for slump

LUZI ANN JAVIER AND JASON SCOTT — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 06:37 CDT

SINGAPORE — Wheat is heading for the biggest slump in three years as the second-largest harvest on record swells stockpiles, easing shortages that drove global food costs to an all-time high.

Prices that plunged 20 percent to $6.3425 a bushel this year in Chicago will probably drop as low as $5.90 before the end of December, according to the median estimate of nine analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg.

Supply in the 12 months ending June 30 will expand 5 percent to 684 million metric tons, boosting inventories to the highest in a decade, the London-based International Grains Council (IGC) estimates.

Despite rule, full planes sometimes sit, wait for hours

JOAN LOWY — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:09 CDT

WASHINGTON — Being stuck for hours on a stuffy, stinky plane at the airport was supposed to be a thing of the past, thanks to the government's threat of huge fines against the airlines.

But last weekend's weather that stranded hundreds of travelers, some for as long as seven hours, on an airport tarmac in Connecticut underscored the limitations of federal rules designed to protect passengers from such ordeals.

Under Transportation Department rules that went into effect in April 2010, most tarmac delays at U.S. airports are limited to three hours for domestic flights and four hours for international flights. Airlines that violate the limit risk fines as high as $27,500.

Monsanto sets its sights on produce

P.J. HUFFSTUTTER — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:08 CDT

CREVE COEUR, Mo. —Monsanto Co., whose genetically modified corn and soybeans have reshaped America's heartland and rallied a nation of fast-food foes, wants to revolutionize the produce aisle.

The agribusiness giant already has quietly stepped into the marketplace with produce grown from its seeds.

Grocery customers are chopping its onions that produce fewer tears, stir-frying its broccoli that decreases cholesterol and biting into tiny orange tomatoes that last longer on the shelf.

Kansas winter wheat crop appears off to a solid start

ROXANA HEGEMAN — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 07:12 CDT

The emerging 2012 winter wheat crop appears to be getting off to a solid start in Kansas after a year of drought that decimated many crops that came before it.

Across Kansas, the changing of the seasons is marked each fall by the millions of acres of greening wheat fields. This season, however, hundreds of thousands more acres than usual are emerging beneath dead stalks of failed corn and soybean crops.

Just how much more winter wheat was planted this fall probably won't be known until the government releases its official estimate in January, but industry observers say it is safe to say the state is going to have a significant increase over the 8.7 million acres of wheat seeded last year.

Farm defaults low despite drought

ROXANA HEGEMAN — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:09 CDT

Farm loan delinquencies remain low in Kansas as fall harvest wraps up, but it is too early to know what impact the drought will have on loan repayments, a top Farm Service Agency loan official said Thursday.

The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is the state's biggest single lender for farmers. Loan chief Arlyn Stiebe said the agency had a delinquency rate of 2.7 percent on its farm operating loans as of the Sept. 30 fiscal year end.

The rate has been lower this time of year only once in the past 13 years — in 2008, when the delinquency rate was 2.4 percent, Stiebe said.

Rural land's value rises; so does fear of a 'bubble'

JOSHUA ZUMBRUN — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:09 CDT

WASHINGTON — When regulators come knocking at the Bank of Newman Grove, Neb., inquiring about loan risks, Chairman Jeffrey Gerhart has a "stress test" ready to show how his portfolio would fare if rural land prices dropped 25 percent. Or 50 percent. Or 75 percent.

"I hope it's not going to go to heck in a handbag out here, but this allows us to look at those worst-case scenarios," said Gerhart, a fourth-generation banker in the 800-person town two hours west of Omaha, deep in the heart of Nebraska's corn and soybean belt.

He began stress testing his bank's assets, about 90 percent of which are agricultural, in the last two years after prodding from staffers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Farmers celebrate OK of free trade deals

MICHAEL J. CRUMB — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:09 CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. farmers on Thursday celebrated the approval of free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, saying the pacts will increase demand for their products, though American consumers shouldn't see a drastic increase in overall food prices.

Congress approved the agreements Wednesday night, calling for the elimination of tariffs on U.S. products exported to those countries.

Farm exports are expected to increase by $2.3 billion and 20,000 agriculture-related jobs are expected to be created under the agreements, which will gradually be phased in.

Kansas' fall harvest forecast sinks lower

ROXANA HEGEMAN — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:37 CDT

The latest government forecast of the size of the Kansas fall harvest paints an even more dismal picture than last month's estimate.

Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service on Wednesday projected corn production in the state at 451.5 million bushels, or 22 percent smaller than last year's crop and down 4 percent from the September forecast.

Their updated forecast comes despite the fact that Kansas farmers planted 4.9 million acres of corn — 50,000 acres more than a year ago. But many of those acres were abandoned as an unrelenting drought and a record-breaking string of triple-digit temperatures decimated fields. The October forecast estimated just 4.3 million of those corn acres to be actually harvested.

Air rules are creating a dustup in farm states

Mike McGraw — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:08 CDT

Farm-state congressmen and their tractor-driving constituents contend federal bureaucrats are on the verge of saddling them with a new, costly and harebrained government regulation.

They deridingly call it the "farm dust" rule.

Indeed, farm country is abuzz over what some see as the Environmental Protection Agency's latest assault on farmers and common sense.

Monsanto reports loss; investors snap up shares

CHRISTOPHER LEONARD — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:12 CDT

ST. LOUIS — Monsanto Co. reported a fiscal fourth-quarter loss that beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday and said that it must restate the last two years' earnings because of a federal investigation into its herbicide sales.

But investors focused on Monsanto's stronger corn seed sales, which rose 58 percent from last year, and on its pledge Wednesday to deliver earnings growth in the mid-teens.

Its shares jumped $2.08, or 3.3 percent, to $65.03 in midday trading. The stock rose as high as $65.80 in earlier trading. They are still more than 15 percent below their 52-week high in late July.