FYI on Poultry

The U.S. poultry industry may have begun to turn the corner on high feed costs. Corn futures for delivery in December reached a high near $7.80 a bushel in late August, while the price September 20 is closer to $7.05, despite USDA’s September 12 downward revision in the corn production forecast. Will the U.S. poultry industry look back a year from now and be able to say this was the downward turning on $7-a-bushel corn prices?

A WATT-Rennier Poultry Confidence Index poll shows 68% of respondents use a smartphone, and more than 97% participate in social media. The U.S. poultry industry has not only adopted smartphones for email, texting and web surfing but also is heavily engaged in social media websites.

Acting under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services Michael Scuse will lead USDA's first-ever agricultural trade Mission to Vietnam in the cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from September 26-29.

Currency rates bear watching, both for the effect they have on trade volume as well as for what they tell us about the global economy, write Steve Meyer and Len Steiner.

An overview of the trade in chicken meat to, from and within the Americas by industry watcher, Terry Evans.

In a hearing yesterday before the House Committee on Agriculture's Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, several producers and an economist testified about the challenges meat and poultry producers are facing in terms of feed availability.

With the economy improving, John was thrilled to see his small company starting to boom. With all the new business, John was so busy signing new accounts and training his new staff members, he delegated the bookkeeping responsibilities to a long-time employee he trusted. As time passed, John started noticing discrepancies in the business’ account and discovered the employee had been embezzling money from the company. Unfortunately, embezzlement is not uncommon and is often difficult to detect. What could John have done differently to prevent this kind of problem?

The United Kingdom could lose a large amount of its free range egg production unless market conditions begin to improve. Results of a survey conducted by the British Free Range Egg Producers Association indicate that nearly 12 per cent of the country’s commercial free range flock could disappear if producers continue to lose money. That equates to a staggering 2,000,000 layers.

An investigation by the Des Moines Register has revealed gaps in state and federal egg safety systems, despite new federal regulations designed to reduce Salmonella in shell eggs, according to a report last week.

New legislation introduced by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating naturally occurring farm dust is welcome news for the nation's farmers and ranchers, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

In April 1990, Al Gore published an open letter in the New York Times "To Skeptics on Global Warming" in which he compared them to medieval flat-Earthers. He soon became vice president and his conviction that climate change was dominated by man-made emissions went mainstream. But a few physicists weren't worrying about Al Gore in the 1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or "cosmic rays," whose atmospheric levels appear to rise and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that deflect them from the earth.

The U.S. will likely become the world’s largest ethanol exporter in the second half of 2011, overtaking Brazil, which has been suffering from high sugar prices, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It's a truism that technology is always shrinking and getting more compact. This, however, might be something else altogether. Previously the world's smallest electronic motor was a microscopic 200 nanometers across. Not bad, especially when you consider that the average human hair is only 60,000 nanometers wide.

Hog prices may rebound from the biggest monthly loss since October as consumers switch from beef to cheaper pork, according to Karl Skold, an economist and the former head of commodity procurement for ConAgra Foods Inc.

Mycotoxin analysis results for the second quarter of 2011 from Biomin, including more than 2,800 analyses of more than 800 animal feed ingredients. At least one mycotoxin was found in 90 per cent of the samples.

With the 2011 corn crop not likely big enough to meet demand and as prices continue to rise, livestock producers soon might be facing a critical decision: whether they should reduce their use of corn for feed.

Purdue Extension agricultural economist Chris Hurt said the livestock industry probably would cut back when 2012 crop prices rise above $7 per bushel – a level the market has now reached.

Agricultural land values in Britain climbed to a record in the first half as higher livestock and grain prices encouraged farmers to increase production, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

The average cost of an acre of bare land, terrain without built structures, rose to 6,115 pounds ($10,100) from 5,846 pounds at the end of 2010, the fourth straight increase for a six-month period, the London-based group said in a report today. Prices have more than doubled in the last five years, RICS said.

Concerns over volatility in the food and agriculture market stem from fears over price rises and behind this, fears over food security.

A recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation at the UN has called for global leaders to take action to ease the fluctuations in prices and calm the fears over food security around the world.

Technology that provides the on-site nutrient treatment is known as advanced micro-aerobic digestion, and it forgoes the traditional approach of treating water at municipal wastewater and stormwater facilities.