Beef, Wheat Sales Up Sharply on Week
Brownfield Ag News – 8/16/2018
The USDA reports wheat export sales for the week ending August 9th hit a new marketing year high. The 2018/19 marketing year for wheat got underway June 1st, while 2017/18 continues through the end of August for corn, sorghum, and soybeans, and the end of September for soybean products. Wheat came out at 803,000 tons (29.5 million bushels), up sharply from both the week ending August 2nd and the four-week average. Mexico purchased 247,800 tons and the Philippines bought 177,900 tons. For the 2018/19 marketing year to date, wheat sales are 305.6 million bushels, compared to 410.1 million in 2017/18.
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Ukraine Exports Wheat Mostly to Asia, The Middle East in July
Successful Farming – 8/15/2018
Asian and Middle East countries were the leading buyers of Ukrainian wheat in July, the first month of the new 2018/19 season, data by analyst UkrAgroConsult showed on Wednesday. Ukraine is among the world’s major wheat exporters and sold a total of 17.2 million tonnes of wheat abroad in the previous 2017/18 season.
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Farmers Swept Up in Trade Wars Remember ’80s Grain Embargo
NPR – 8/16/2018
Farmers have worked for decades to lock in global customers. One Kansas farmer says U.S. trade wars threaten that, and remind him of the Soviet grain embargo nearly 40 years ago. Corn and soybean farmers are getting ready for harvest season, and many of them are anxious this year. Their crops are worth a lot less now than they were before the trade war started, and they worry that things could get worse. Frank Morris of member station KCUR has been out talking to farmers, and many of them say they’ve been through this before, and it ends badly for both farmers and taxpayers.
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NAFTA Talks Hit One-Year Mark as Trump Keeps Canada Hanging
Roll Call – 8/16/2018
Top U.S. and Mexican negotiators are meeting this week in the latest effort to finish a bilateral trade agreement amid unanswered questions about the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s launching of negotiations to revamp the 1994 trade pact. Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, secretary of the economy, made a late afternoon arrival at the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Wednesday. Guajardo is leading a Mexican delegation comprised of negotiators from the current administration and a transition team from the new administration that takes office in December.
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Opinion: Trait-based Regulation of GM Plants is On The Horizon – At Last!
Agri-Pulse – 8/15/2018
USDA’s Sid Abel and Doug McKalip just briefed me on the new regulatory framework that is shaping up for the oversight of plants modified by what they are now calling “plant breeding innovations.” These include the much-touted CRISPR/Cas-based gene editing, as well as other new approaches to the modification of plants’ genetic material.I could barely believe what I was hearing. So here goes….. To begin with, as announced in late March by USDA Secretary Perdue, the agency does not and will not regulate plants that could have been developed using what are now considered “traditional” methods of genetic modification.
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K-State Researchers Crack Code on Bread Wheat Genome
AgDaily – 8/17/2018
Kansas State University scientists, in collaboration with the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, have finally nailed down a detailed description of the complete genome of bread wheat, the world’s most widely-cultivated crop. This work will pave the way for the production of varieties better adapted to climate challenges, with higher yields, enhanced nutritional quality, and improved sustainability. The article is titled “Shifting the limits in wheat research and breeding using a fully annotated reference genome.” The research article — authored by more than 200 scientists from 73 research institutions in 20 countries — presents the reference genome of the bread wheat variety Chinese Spring. The DNA sequence ordered along the 21 chromosomes is the highest-quality genome sequence produced to date for wheat. It is the result of 13 years of collaborative international research and the support of the National Science Foundation, Kansas farmers, and many others.
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Montana Wheat On Track For Record Yields
Billings Gazette – 8/16/2018
Montana wheat farmers are on track to have one of their best harvests, one year after being burned by drought. Farmers across the state are reporting high yields and good quality in what the U.S. Department of Agriculture has suggested could be a statewide average of 50 bushels per acre. If Montana wheat hits that mark, the 2018 yield would be a record. Wheat is a $1 billion crop for Montana, where the grain is grown in all but a few counties.
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Source: U.S. Wheat Associates