Australia Looks To Avoid Wheat Rust Outbreak
World-Grain – 9/7/2018
A nationwide outbreak of wheat rust strain Ug99 could cost Australia up to $1.4 billion over the next 10 years, according to a new report from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). Wheat stem rust is a fungal disease that can affect wheat, barley, oat, rye and triticale when seasonal conditions are favorable. The fungus survives on host plants and can spread quickly over large distances by wind, movements of infected plant materials and contaminated farm machinery, equipment and clothing. “The Ug99 strain is not present in Australia but poses a major risk to the wheat industry in terms of revenue losses and increased production costs, should it arrive in the country,” said Steve Hatfield-Dodds, PhD, executive director of ABARES. “It is a highly virulent strain of wheat stem rust that has overcome 17 of 34 stem rust resistance genes found in wheat.”
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Growers Express Worries Over Tariffs
KMA Land – 9/7/2018
Apple and wheat growers are among U.S. ag producers who are bearing some of the brunt of retaliation by other countries in recent tariff hikes. As the dispute over tariffs and its effect on trade ebbs and flows, talks between countries continues. Before the trade agreement was tentatively reached between the United States and Mexico, the U.S. apple industry was facing a 20 percent tariff on apples exported to Mexico, in retaliation to U.S. imposed tariffs, according to an op-ed piece written by industry leaders and published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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U.S.-Canada Trade Talks Resume With Deadline Clock Ticking
World-Grain – 9/7/2018
Talks between Canada and the United States aimed at overcoming remaining obstacles to concluding a new tripartite trade agreement to revise or replace the North American Free Trade Agreement resumed Sept. 5 after negotiators failed to reach agreement the previous week. U.S. and Mexican negotiators on Aug. 27 reached what the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative termed “a preliminary agreement in principle” on a new bilateral accord to supplant NAFTA. The U.S.-Mexico trade agreement resulted in a scramble as Canadian negotiators, who were excluded from the NAFTA renegotiation for the previous several weeks, flew to Washington for talks with U.S. and Mexican negotiators to see if there was enough common ground to commit their government to the agreement, or the “preliminary agreement in principle,” before Aug. 31.
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U.S. Trade Wars: The Farmers Who Trust Trump, But Not Without Worries
Daily Insider – 9/9/2018
Support for President Donald Trump remains strong in the American farming heartland but, as BBC North America correspondent James Cook found in Broadview, Montana, there are also concerns about the drift away from free trade. Michelle Erickson-Jones should be celebrating. On the Great Plains, the harvest is coming to a close and she is cutting the very last of this year’s wheat, rattling across a golden field in a combine harvester which bristles with technology. In the cab more than half a dozen screens are pumping out data as the machine reaps, threshes and winnows. A tablet superimposes the track of the great green-and-yellow beast on a satellite image of the land. Farming here in Montana is a hi-tech business with a global market. The most important customer for this farm is not a bakery in the nearest village but the world’s third largest economy, Japan.
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Illinois Wheat Yield Projections Missing Mark
The Southern Illinoisan – 9/4/2018
Illinois isn’t alone in getting mixed wheat yield projections. The same thing happened in Kentucky this year. The National Agricultural Statistics Service released a report in May that growers in Kentucky would set a record with average yields of 80 bushels per acre. In June, NASS changed its estimate to 65 bushels, likely closer to the actual number. Final numbers have not yet been released by NASS. “I didn’t believe that,” Carrie Knott said about the May number. “I would not have released that report. We had a lot of people who planted late.”
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Source: U.S. Wheat Associates