Month: May 2019

Good morning. This is Bob Bragg. Welcome to the May 28^th edition of Farm News and Views.

Weather in much of the Corn Belt and beyond, is top of the news this morning. Farmers from Michigan to Ohio and west into Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska are reporting that their fields are to wet to plant, and rain continues to fall. Rivers in Illinois and Iowa are flooding adjacent farm land, and the Mississippi Levee Board is reporting that more than a half million acres of land in the Mississippi Delta has been covered by backwater floods. Flooding is also occurring along the Missouri river and its tributaries. Many farmers are predicting that much of the flooded land in the Midwest won’t be farmed this year. read more

Good morning. This is Bob Bragg. Welcome to the May 21^st edition of Farm News and Views.

Did you celebrate World Bee Day yesterday? I did, and I read some interesting statistics about bees that I’ll share. World wide there are over 20,000 species of bees, including about 4,000 species of Native bees in North America that are found where ever flowers bloom. Bees are estimated to pollinate 170,000 species of plants worldwide, so the common expression “busy as a bee” isn’t just a misnomer. It was once believed that honey bees didn’t exist in North America before Europeans brought them to Virginia in 1622. But a 2009 discovery of a 14 million year old fossil of an extinct honey bee in west-central Nevada proved that honey bees had lived in North America in the distant past. In the west, according to records, the first honey bees arrived in Utah about 1850, and came to Colorado in 1863. Although honey bee Queens often live for three or four years, worker bees live for a few weeks in the summer, and a few months while in the hive during winter. One worker bee will produce about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey during its lifetime in the summer. read more

Good Morning, this is Bob Bragg with the May 14^th edition of Farm News and Views.

News about a trade trade deal with China, or lack of one, has dominated agricultural news for the past several weeks. Just when there seemed to be light at the end of the trade deal tunnel, the door was slammed, and agricultural commodity markets took another downward spiral. Prices for wheat and beef, two commodities that are important to Four Corners Region farmers and ranchers, though seemingly not a top priority for trade negotiators have followed other ag commodities prices down from what they were a month ago. read more

Good morning, this is Bob Bragg with the May 7^th edition of Farm News and Views.

The story at the top of ag news today is President Trump’s threat to impose additional tariffs on China May 10^th if the U.S. and China don’t reach a trade agreement this week. Commodity markets were sharply down yesterday for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and hogs. These commodities were already facing stiff headwinds due to overproduction and the yearlong trade wars with our leading trading partners. A done deal with China this week would garner a huge sigh of relief from U.S. farmers, many of whom are struggling with the sixth year of low commodity prices. read more