“Go ahead Kevin… Tell Elvin Hayes what you told me before the game.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come-on… you told me that you were going to
kick Elvin’s (rear-end)!” – Larry “Legend” Bird to his teammate Kevin McHale
just prior to game tip-off with Elvin Hayes standing in their presence
Elvin Hayes was no push-over in the 1970’s and early 80’s as he was a perennial 20 point per game scorer and 12-time consecutive NBA All-Star after being the top draft pick in the summer of 1968. Anyway, Bird must have figured McHale needed some extra motivation so he stirred the pot with his teammate while also seeing if he could throw Elvin off his game. I couldn’t find a reference to the specific game when this quote occurred so we’ll just have to speculate that Bird achieved his goal and the Celtics won the game.
Speculation
is always needed as farm managers while we try to maneuver markets, consider
expansion or contraction of the business, plan for labor, etc., and realizing
this need is the first step to being successful. Understanding the risks and rewards and
acting in your farms best interest motivates many of our top farms in the
region and across the country. It’s not
easy selling a crop before it’s produced, but it’s also not easy to acquire the
capital to on-farm bin every bushel produced.
The grain markets are showing some profitability again and as usual,
some important decisions will have to be made (or have already been made) on
selling prior and future crop production.
I still
like the message Ed Usset would instill in farm managers and that message was
to physically write down your farm’s marketing plan and the commodity price
targets you set forth for profitability – set some realistic targets with
selling of 10-15% production increments.
Communicate this written plan to key stakeholders in the business and insure
it gets executed against. If you have
concerns with Mr. Usset’s approach, then consider hiring outside professionals
to help guide you through the process. My guess is that you’ll learn quite a bit
along the way and you’ll enjoy the experience.
Sounds like a reasonably good strategy to me. Good luck.
Regional Weather
Well,
the autumn season lingers along as daily high temperatures continue to stretch above
freezing and no significant moisture potential stirs in the week’s forecast. Without any significant snow cover, ambient
air temperatures will most likely stay in an above average range.
I’ll count on your weather app
for the best guidance through the 7-8 day forecast, but looking beyond that,
I’ve found this site from NOAA to be fairly reliable for a general 8-14 day
outlook (next week). https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/index.php
For the third week of December, the
forecast is to have greater chances of above average temperatures as well as slightly
above average chances on the precipitation front. With some precipitation coming into the mix,
it may signal the end to our well above average conditions.
The NOAA
organization also provides three month outlooks. If we would like to get a general forecast
for the start of the 2021 calendar year (Jan-Feb-Mar), it can be seen here:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/.../long_range/seasonal.php?lead=2
This forecast
currently predicts better chances of below average temperatures and slightly
above average precipitation for our region.
Since we have been drier than normal the past several months, it is not surprising
that we would drift towards more precipitation at some point in the future.
Interesting to
note, most of the Midwest is also forecasted for greater chances of above
average winter precipitation over this time frame. If the precipitation amounts accumulate to
well above average, it could set the stage for some delayed planting next
spring on many acres of corn and soybeans.
We’ll see.
Looking
back at some of the historical maps on the USDA site, the last time December
was this dry for the far northern plains was in 2006 and 2012. If I remember correctly, the growing seasons
of 2007 and 2013 were fairly good across most of the northern plains.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Product Spotlight: Laser Scarecrows
A guy was thinking the other day
about sunflowers and the primary pitfalls around producing the crop. Naturally, the train of thought eventually
evolved to the risk around blackbirds and the brainstorming of potential new
innovations. And wouldn’t you know it… every
now and then, even a blind squirrel finds a nut!
A plant scientist out of the
University of Rhode Island (URI) has developed a device (currently in testing) of
continuously moving beams of green LED lasers to scare-off flying pests like
starlings and red-winged blackbirds to prevent crop damage. So far, a few successful tips have been solar
recharging of the laser beam device for added mobility and reliability, as well
as keeping the laser beams continuously moving at the height of the maturing
crop. Supposedly, if the laser beams become
stationary, eventually the birds will become insensitive to the lasers.
On the east coast, sweet corn is
the target of this URI research project, but there is no reason we couldn’t
adapt the technology to the northern plains for use in sunflower and/or field
corn to aid farm managers in minimizing blackbird damage.
https://newatlas.com/environment/laser-scarecrows-helps-keep...
Future Chinese Corn Imports Forecasted as
Strong
Both Bloomberg and Reuters news
outlets have bullish outlooks on the potential for China to further increase
corn import volumes from the United States.
The Chinese are looking to replenish their swine herds to increase their
domestic pork production as well as increase their poultry output. Coarse grains are needed as feed for both and
their state reserves have dwindled over the past couple years of trade war with
the US.
With corn production potential
forecasted for the ‘20/’21 season to be down in several key areas (US, Ukraine,
and EU) versus initial forecast, it sets the stage for potential bullish corn
commodity prices moving into next summer.
Forecasts for Chinese corn imports from the US range from 16-33 million
MT in 2021. Typically, the US is not a large
player for China to receive corn from – over the past 8 years, 2012 was the
largest volume year (2020 excluded) for US corn into China at 5.1 mil MT.
In other trade news, the US-China
Phase I trade deal continues to build momentum.
However, the pace of Chinese purchases has not even reached 50% of the
agreed upon terms by the end of October (only 60 days remain). And, even though the Chinese are trying, it
looks bleak for the trade deal to reach fulfillment. As usual, it’ll be interesting to see how the
US government administration addresses the situation in 2021.
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2020/11/china-imports-of-us-corn... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-26/cofco-sells... https://www.reuters.com/article/grains-igc/update-1-igc-cuts-forecast... https://www.agmrc.org/renewable-energy/renewable-energy...
Inverted
Agriculture Commodity Markets
Well,
the commodity markets are not my bailiwick, but I’m always intrigued by the
history of the markets and what a guy may expect and forecast moving forward. Unfortunately, our current political climate
is like no other we have seen in a couple centuries, so I would probably
suggest we throw out the norms and tend to rely on gut instinct to get us
through the near future.
Obviously, we note that we usually see inverted markets when spot ag-commodities are priced high. The question now becomes – are spot commodity markets high? Or, are they just higher than the last couple seasons? Your guess is as good as mine. Good luck!
Asia-Pacific Nations Trade Deal
Last month, several Asian Pacific countries signed a large trade deal. The Asia-Pacific trade agreement (RCEP – Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) will include the following nations: China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Brunei-Darussalam (15 nations in total). It is interesting to note that India and Taiwan were not a part of the trade pact. The human population of the combined countries is 2.2 billion people or about 30% of the global population.
The strength of this pact does come
into question as many tariffs will remain in place for the foreseeable future
and many countries have existing smaller trade deals with local nations. One example would be that Japan will be
allowed to maintain tariffs on rice, wheat, sugar, dairy, beef and pork.
The multi-nation trade deal will
now go through the process of ratification by the elected officials in each
country. If fully ratified, it will be
interesting to see how the USMCA may need to be tweaked or expanded to continue
to stay ahead at the global level.
Even though this pact may influence
30% of the earth’s population, the US at 4.5% of the global population still makes-up
about 24% of the world’s economy (based on GDP). The new Asia-Pacific Nations trade deal would
constitute about 27% share of global GDP.
If you add the USA with Canada and Mexico (USMCA), you would compute to
the same level of 27% share of global GDP.
https://www.npr.org/.../asia-pacific-allies-sign-huge-trade-deal-with-china...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54949260 https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
Raven® Introduces Autonomous Grain Cart
Raven looks to replace 340 man
hours with technology that will allow for a tractor pulled grain cart to be
operated automatically from the combine cab.
The combine operator will be able to adjust the cart’s field speed while
loading it on-the-go, as well as setting a specific spot on the field edge for the
tractor with grain cart to unload into trucks.
Raven grain-cart autonomy units will be available for customers in the 2021 harvest season and it will be interesting to hear the feedback. Raven looks to bring additional autonomous solutions to the market with recent acquisitions of “Smart Ag” and “DOT Technology”. The next targets for Raven will be autonomy with single unit sprayers and air-seeders (no tractor required). You would think that the single unit concept could eventually evolve with grain carts and tillage implements.
https://www.thedailyscoop.com/...raven-first-autonomy-product
https://www.thedailyscoop.com/raven-invests... https://ravenprecision.com/raven-autonomy/driverless-ag-technology/dot
Random Agricultural Facts – Weed control history
As one can easily imagine, the very early days of
agricultural production (at the end of the last ice age (10-15,000 years ago)
did not include much for technology regarding the management of weed
pests. Just like the overall practice of
growing food, the weed control aspect involved consistent and ample manual
labor (hand pulling). Early weeding
tools were made from wood (even the early animal pulled plows were made from
wood), but with iron making becoming a craft around 3000-1000 BC, knifes, hoes,
mattocks and iron plows became more efficient and more effective to utilize.
Weed control technology remained stagnant for centuries after the metallurgy times began primarily because there was ample labor for hand-weeding. The Industrial Age starting in the mid-1700’s brought the next wave of weed control options to local farm producers as farm labor abundance diminished. An English fellow by the name of Jethro Tull gets the nod as starting the British Agricultural Revolution with inventions of the grain drill and cultivation implements. Now that crops were in rows from the grain drill, the hand weeding became more efficient (no wasting time determining what were weeds and what was crop from a random scattering of plants), and tillage implements were eventually modified to cultivate between the crop rows.
Here in the United States, California was a hot bed for
agricultural ideas during the late 1800’s to mid-1900’s. One early tool was the “sled planter system”. This planter had ski type runners that ran in
the furrow to aid in keeping rows more straight during planting. Then after planting, the sled planter would be
modified with tillage tools to pass through the fields again. With the ski runners following the same path
as planting, better precision was obtained with controlling weeds close to the
crop row.
The “French plow” was another such invention that was tailored
for the vineyards. The plow had a
guidance rod that sensed an approaching grape vine and automatically adjusted
the tillage blade around the vine tree trunk to obtain mechanical weed control in-row
between the vines (see YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtLiib-KY2s
).
For most farm managers, agronomists, and weed scientists
today, the history of technology in weed control is the history of herbicides. There were some chemicals used for weed
control as early as the mid-1800’s.
Their use was not very common due to high use rates (600-1000 lb/ac
rates of some dry compounds), harmful toxicity (environment and human), fire
hazards, poor application equipment, and supply availability. These first herbicides were inorganic salts
such as sodium chloride, sodium chlorate, arsenic salts and carbon bisulfide as
a fumigant. In addition, various oils,
solvents, and inorganic acids like sulfuric acid, were used as burn-down
herbicides.
The discovery of 2,4-D in the 1940’s and the chemical
synthesis processes that followed along with application technology has allowed
for today’s state of an efficient and fairly safe system that farmers can
manage fairly effectively. We still have
our weed control challenges, but there have been great strides over the last
250 years – which in the big scheme of things is not that long! With herbicide resistance at the forefront
today, it’ll be interesting to see the next wave of weed control technologies develop
for the future.
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=17593
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