Local soybean harvest approaches the halfway mark as farmers take advantage of early season fair weather.
This season farmers planted 64,500 acres of soybeans in Franklin Parish, according to recent Farm Service Agency (FSA) numbers. This year’s acreage is up significantly from last year’s acreage of 22,000.
Read MoreThe seeding process for the Brazilian soybean crop has just started in some regions of Brazil, as discussed in the last blog. Despite weather issues that worry producers, the nation’s ag agency projects an increase of 15% more production in all grains for the coming growing year.
The 2020/2021 harvest came to 9 billion bushels (250 million tons) produced by Brazilian farmers, but the coming year is expected to be 11 billion bushels (300 million tons).
Read MoreU.S. soybean exports jumped last week to a six-month peak, while corn shipments were the highest in a month as Louisiana Gulf Coast terminals steadily ramped up operations disrupted nearly a month ago by Hurricane Ida, preliminary data showed on Monday.
Read MoreThe latest batch of grain export data from USDA, out Thursday morning and covering the week through Sept. 16, showed some lackluster results for corn and wheat, but soybean volume was more encouraging after moving to the upper end of trade estimates. Wheat volume fell 42% lower week-over-week but stayed just above the prior four-week average. Corn slumped to the lower end of trade estimates, meantime.
Read MoreDuring a webcast, a new agricultural lender in her first full-time job asked, “Why do producers switch lenders?” Of course, the answer to this age-old question is, “It depends!” Six decades of being involved with agriculture and various economic cycles has taught me that circumstances often vary as an industry or for an individual farm.
Read MorePeople ask Jim Schwartz how they can make more per acre raising corn and soybeans. When they do, Schwartz, Beck’s director of research, including the Practical Farm Research program, says he can point to several practices for both corn and soybeans that have a big return on investment very quickly. However, he always starts at the same place.
“The place to begin is with tile and lime,” he insists. “We’ve proven it time and again in our PFR program, and farmers who install tile and add lime tell us the same thing. If you want to begin increasing income and profit per acre over time, there’s no better place to start than by installing tile and spreading lime where you need tile and lime.”
Read MoreIn Mato Grosso, Brazil, farmers have started the seeding process amid concerns over one of the worst droughts in a century. The country is already facing severe water shortages from last year’s dry conditions. And now, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report affirming that there is a 70% chance of La Niña returning between November 2021 and January 2022.
Read MoreCharles Canatella, Chairman of the Louisiana Soybean, Grain Research and Promotion Board, is also a member of the United Soybean Board. He says one of the main goals of the USB is to open up new markets worldwide for US soybeans.
(This report is a service of the Louisiana Soybean, Grain Research and Promotion Board)
Read MoreOne of the most important decisions a soybean producer makes every year is variety selection. The LSU AgCenter conducts an Official Variety Trial (OVT) and Core-block demonstration plots to provide unbiased data to assist in variety selection. The OVT and core-block demonstrations are planted throughout the state to collect performance data in different environments. It is important for a producer to consider how varieties perform in an environment similar to their own and how varieties perform in multiple environments. Varieties that perform consistently well across multiple environments and years could be considered to have more performance stability.
Read MoreEarlier this week, the USDA’s Economic Research Service noted in its monthly Oil Crops Outlook report that, “Hurricane Ida’s emergence in the Gulf of Mexico slowed the pace of exports near the end of August which is expected to continue into early September.
Read MoreThe United Soybean Board met in person for the first time in over a year back in July. Chairman Dan Farney from Illinois says everything done by the USB is thanks to funds provided by soybean farmers around the country. “When I sell my beans,” says Farney, “and I pay 1/2 of one percent, 1/4 of one percent stays in Illinois and 1/4 of one percent goes to the United Soybean Board.
(This report a service of the Louisiana Soybean, Grain Research and Promotion Board)
Read MoreThis week, the House Agriculture Committee passed its portion of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, including more than $94 billion in new spending related to agriculture.
For Louisiana, there is a glaring hole in that spending plan as it is lacking supplemental disaster assistance for farmers and ranchers after Hurricane Ida ravaged the state last month.
Read MoreCercospora leaf blight has been a bane to soybean farmers in the mid-South region of the United States for the better part of two decades, costing the industry more than $250 million in the past five years alone. Now, thanks to a three-year, $324,988 research grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, LSU AgCenter plant pathologist Sara Thomas-Sharma and her team are trying to develop long-term solutions to the problem.
Read MoreWhen Steve Gauck visited the Soybean Watch ’21 field in mid-July, there was still plenty of moisture. Signs of disease weren’t evident, but he told the grower that since the season had been on the wet side so far, a fungicide application would likely be a good investment. And he also advised adding an insecticide — a few grasshoppers and other insects were nibbling on leaves in July.
The grower took the advice to heart and applied a fungicide with an insecticide with his own self-propelled sprayer at the R3 stage of soybean development.
Read MoreHurricane Ida spared Franklin Parish much of its fury but pummeled south Louisiana Sunday night and Monday.
Locally, few lost power while only a few fallen limbs littered yards. Many rain gauges across the parish recorded less than an inch of rain.
Franklin Parish farmers worked through the weekend harvesting corn and soybeans in preparation of torrential rain and damaging winds that never came.
Carol L. Pinnell-Alison, LSU AgCenter extension agent, acknowledged local farmers dodged a bullet.
“I think we are in pretty good shape,” Pinnell-Alison said. “We had minimum impact with corn and soybeans from Hurricane Ida.”
Pinnell-Alison said the storm’s eastern trajectory buffered Franklin Parish from its worst impacts.
“We might have had a little wind damage to the corn but not much,” she said.
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