As Drought Grips Australia’s East, Giant Grain Trains Roll to the Rescue
Reuters – 8/29/2018
Until a few months ago, train driver Gavin Slater had never seen anything like it. Five locomotives, with a combined 15,000 horsepower, ready to pull 101 wagons brimful of grain. The converted coal carriages behind Slater were being loaded in Mallala, a town of several hundred people in Australia’s fertile southern wheat belt. It’s one of few farming areas in the country able to provide grain to parched eastern states to keep cattle and sheep fed and flour mills grinding amid one of the worst droughts on record.
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Wheat Jumps as Russian Grain Traders Prepare for AgMin Meeting
Successful Farming via Reuters – 8/29/2018
Russia’s agriculture ministry will discuss the current grain market situation, production and export plans during its routine meeting with exporters on Sept. 3, the ministry told Reuters, as global benchmarks jumped. The Chicago December wheat contract rose on Wednesday on market talk of Russia potentially curbing grain exports in the future. Russia is one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, but its crop is expected to decline this year from a record harvest in 2017. The relationship between Russian grain exporters and the ministry has been in the spotlight since their previous meeting on Aug. 17.
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FranceAgriMer Adjusts 2018 Soft Wheat Harvest Quality Levels
Supply Chain Dive – 8/28/2018
Farm agency FranceAgriMer on Wednesday estimated that 85 percent of this year’s French soft wheat crop showed a protein content of 11.5 percent or above, confirming initial indications of good crop quality but the estimate was six percentage points lower than last week. The share of the crop above the 12 percent mark, a key level in international tenders, rose to 48 percent from 47 percent last week, FranceAgriMer said in an update to its annual wheat quality survey.
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U.S. and Mexico Tentatively Set to Replace NAFTA With New Deal
One News Page – 8/28/2018
The Trump administration and Mexico have reached a preliminary accord to end the North American Free Trade Agreement and replace it with a deal that the administration wants to be more favorable to the United States. President Donald Trump, in announcing the tentative agreement Aug. 27 at the White House, said a new deal would be called “the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. Trump has frequently condemned the 24-year-old NAFTA trade pact as a job killing “disaster” for the United States.
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Researchers See Big Benefits From Decoding Wheat Genome
Agri-Pulse – 8/29/2018
The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGCS), a collaboration of more than 200 scientists from 20 countries, has published in the international journal Science a detailed description of the complete genome for Chinese bread wheat – a non-commercial variety of wheat. The high-quality reference genome sequence, basically a genetic template for researchers, is the latest to be published for the world’s major food crops. The rice genome was published in 2005, followed by the maize and soybean genomes in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
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Growers Can Check Wheat Variety Falling Number Data Online
Capital Press – 8/29/2018
Northwest wheat farmers can check online to see how the different wheat varieties fared this year in falling number tests. USDA Agricultural Research Service molecular geneticist Camille Steber posts the information gleaned from Washington State University cereal variety trials on her website. The tool compares falling number susceptibility and yield, two important factors for farmers deciding which varieties to plant next. The website shows “which had high falling numbers, which ones also yield well,” Steber said.
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Source: U.S. Wheat Associates