You can keep up with the latest news throughout the week by checking the blog. These are today’s headlines, including crop insurance and consolidation in the food industry.
Crops and Livestock News
Crop insurance policies guaranteeing prices for the 2022 crop season are the most expensive ever recorded for soybeans, and the most expensive in 11 years for spring wheat and corn. This is due to increased demand for crops following a drought-hit South American harvest as well as Russia’s attack on Ukraine, analysts and analysts claim.
The guarantees are set by the Department of Agriculture. They act as a floor price below the level at which farmers can receive payments from insurance. They are $14.33 per bushel soybeans and $5.90 per bushel corn in most of the U.S. crop-belt.
You want to make $120 per acre more on your corn this season? Or another $40 per acre for your soybeans. This can happen when farmers discredit three myths, according to Mary Gumz (pioneer agronomy manager).
Americans learn from the pandemeic’s supply-chain woes that shared monopolies rule the food industry. Beef packing is the most concentrated. The top four firms slaughter over 85% of all steers, heifers and cattle.
Despite inflation rising by 7% last year and steaks costing 23% more, consumers paid 23% more. However, prices for fed steers fell to a 10-year low by 2020 and then started recovering slightly as 2022 began.
Farmers are facing a host troubling challenges when it comes to weed control options as they head into the 2022 season.
Shortages of herbicide products – and record high prices for what is available – plus the ever-present prospect of off-target dicamba movement are among those that vex Kevin Bradley, Extension weed specialist at the University of Missouri.
Lee Lubbers and Chad Henderson, both from XtremeAg, check in to update their farms this week. Henderson discovers more farmable land on his current land, while Lubbers hopes that his existing acres will be farmable in the spring.
Technology
Precision Planting unveils Symphony sprayer technology at their 2022 Winter Conference.
Bryce Baker, the marketing manager at Bryce Baker, explains the new technology in this video from their booth at Louisville’s National Farm Machinery Show.
Growers can now connect their FieldView account to create FarmLogs activities automatically.
This allows growers to seamlessly transfer their field work from Climate FieldView Drive to other FieldView supported methods.
This connection can reduce the amount of time entering data, keep accurate records across systems, automatically calculate cost of production, and more easily determine a farm’s profit and loss down to the acre.
Source: Successful Farming
