Meeting Frank--face to face

Frank Lechtenberg (left), a Butte, Nebraska, farmer is a regular visitor to Agriculture Online's Marketing Talk discussion group, finding it a good source of information on the grain markets, and maybe even a source of entertainment from time to time.

In early July, Frank had the idea that it would be good to meet some of the folks who particpate in the discussion group, and posted a message proposing a meeting --somewhere, sometime. "I think everyone of you have something to share, and it would be a little marketing meeting and discussion," he wrote.

More than sixty messages later, the first-ever Marketing Talk Meeting was established.

Frank (frankne) is in Des Moines, Iowa, today talking with folks that he has only known by an online handle--hihowrya, P.O'd Farmer, Captron, Don N Mo, etc.

"I just thought it would be fun to put a face on these names," he said.

Frank's not one of most active posters on the site (and he sure doesn't like his picture taken), but he says he learns a lot by reading what farmers from around the country are saying about crop conditions and marketing strategies.

"I use the site on a daily basis," he says. "It will be good to meet of few of these folks."

It's been good meeting you, Frank. Thanks for the good idea.

Don't kick the cows

Befriending a Simmental cow

A friend of mine, a dairy farmer, was telling me recently about an incident on his place that was still bothering him. He had fired his hired hand (and rehired him later), after he saw the man kicking one his Holsteins. "Don't kick the cows!" he shouted loudly and slowly, ensuring his English would be clearly understood. His employee spoke Spanish and was a good worker and family man, but the moment had gotten away from him, and he was caught in the act of abusing a farm animal.

Telling the story, my friend repeated the line with even greater emphasis: "Don't kick the cows." He sure made me take notice. I know he struggled with his reaction to the whole thing, trying to balance his concern for the cattle with the practical aspects of milking a hundred cows. Anyway, my farmer friend is the kind of man that people should see caring for cattle.

It can be a rough and tumble world on livestock farms, as people in the business know. Handling animals--whether it's for milking, dehorning, birthing, or medicating, takes patience. And sometimes the animals get the best of things. My dairy farmer friend has been gored by a bull and kicked in the knee, among other things, resulting in major injuries. But, if you're involved in animal agriculture, you also expect that producers will shepherd the animals in their care with grace and compassion. I believe most of them do.

A story on Agriculture Online this week, Activists Slowly Shifting US Animal Agriculture Practices, describes how animal rights activists are making headway in influencing public policy on livestock care. In some cases, large meat production companies are responding with changes in their practices, as Smithfield Foods did recently in announcing a phase-out of individual sow gestation crates.

In the story, Temple Grandin, an animal behavior specialist at Colorado State University and expert on humane treatment of farm animals, is quoted as saying that agriculture needs to clean up its own house such that it could showcase its practices to the general public.

"There is no excuse for rotten apples, and the industry needs to speak out against them," Grandin said.

Wheat to fight for acres

Wheat harvest in Ukraine

(Photo courtesy Ukrainian Analytical Agency UkrAgroConsult.)

If your roots are in someplace like central Nebraska, like mine are, you might have a sense of what it's like to think about putting wheat back in a crop rotation mix. In places where wheat hasn't been seen much for many years, the crop could be making a comeback, stepping in the middle of the corn vs. soybean fight.

There's been lots of good news for wheat prices lately. Last week, for example, Agriculture Online correspondent Louise Gartner reported on a "huge export sales number," 2.1 MMT, double the trade estimate, and the largest week's worth of sales since 1996. The sale was a "whopper," she said, and signals that buyers are "desperate for immediate needs."

Global conditions for wheat harvest were documented in a photo gallery we put together last week, World wheat snapshots. The images provide some further perspective on why wheat prices are on the rise now and why the crop is expected to compete next season for acres that were once surely destined for corn or soybeans.

Beans in the high teens?

A rather rare soybean field in Buffalo County, Nebraska

On Monday, I was driving from Des Moines to visit my family's farm in Nebraska. I jumped off I-80 just west of Grand Island and took the backroads northwest through the Platte River valley and then into the hills of Buffalo County.

At one point, buzzing down a gravel road, I had a strange feeling. I realized I had been driving through wall-to-wall corn on both sides of the road for a long stretch. I looked down at the odometer and started to measure. Went about six miles before I spotted something besides corn--a smallish bean field, like a punctuation mark, then back to corn.

On our little plot in Buffalo County, we planted all beans this year, though. That's them in the photo above, looking pretty good on a 98-degree day. When I walked up the hill there to look at the pivot, all you could see was corn, except for our dryland patch of beans across the road.

I realize Nebraska farmers grow a lot of continous corn, but they know how to grow beans, too. Go big red, the state has the second highest average soybean yield in the U.S, tied with Indiana, a half bushel behind Iowa. So, man, where have all the soybeans gone, long time passing?

USDA reported this month that farmers planted the fewest acres of beans this spring since 1994. Nationally, soybean production declined 15%, versus a 19% jump for corn. Soybean acres fell by more than a million acres from last year in Indiana, Minnesota, and Nebraska, USDA said.

Anyway, this image of a corn-covered landscape stuck in my head for the whole trip back and forth to Nebraska. And, every day I keep thinking this volatile grain market wants to say more and more about soybean prices.

Okay, so I'll just get to the point. Our markets editor, Mike McGinnis, dropped by the office today, leaned in the doorway, and shot me a sly grin. A little birdie, who prefers to go unnamed, told him that beans could go to $18 at some point in the next sometime, Mike said. The little birdie is a well-known markets analyst.

I'll not go into all the bean numbers here. A lot smarter people than me do that every day 0n our Web site markets pages. But, you can just see the drama with your own eyes in one certain part of Nebraska. Beans ain't competing this year.

Ron and Susan Mortensen in their Agriculture Online column last week, on a much more conservative note than our little birdie, put it this way: "The basic fact for soybeans is that they must do much better in 2008 in the fight for acres.... Price must do a better job of attracting soybean acres...."

Would $18 get the job done?

Search for your health's sake

Farmers have special health issues, which is why rural health long has had frontline coverage in Successful Farming magazine and on Agriculture Online. And it's one reason why our editors were pleased to learn that Meredith Corporation, the owner of SF and AGOL (and a passel of other media products) has acquired Healia (www.healia.com), a health information search engine.

Healia is a new tool designed to help consumers and health professionals find the "highest quality and most personally relevant search results," Meredith said in a statement about the acquisition.

Healia differs from Google and other general search engines. It uses what it calls a Quality Index Score, which helps glean the best health information from the Web. Healia enables you to personalize findings with "personal search" filters. These can include your gender, age, and race. The engine uses "advanced semantic technology" to improve the effectiveness of the search.

In some experimenting with the site, I searched for info on use of a newer medication for high blood pressure. One of the features allowed me to sort the findings by "dosage," "uses," and "side effects." Each Healia listing included a description of the "attributes" of the source, including whether it's basic or advanced reading, whether it's professional information, and if it is from an HONCode Site.

Comparing Healia and Google searches on the same keyword for the blood pressure medication, I saw some differences. Google turned up about 409,000 results, while Healia with its more focused search gleaned 923 listings. The top three listings on Google were from the manufacturer of the drug; on Healia it was a Federal Drug Administration source, WebMD, and a drug information database called Druglib.com. Two others of Google's top ten listings were from the same source, Drugs.com, and two were from FDA. Healia's top sources were more varied, and included a drug encyclopedia, the Mayo Clinic, and a pharmacists' organization.

The result of my little experiment is that I know a great deal more about treating high blood pressure with this particular drug. Both Google and Healia led me to a mix of credible sources. But in the end, I felt that Healia worked harder, sorting and labelling information in a more creative way.

Anyway, next time you need to research a health issue, check out Healia and the Rural Health section of Agriculture Online.