I suppose that working from behind a desk in Raleigh isn't the best preparation for a day of heavy lifting.  Move-in day at the Southern Farm Show is dirty, heavy lifting.  The United Soybean Board sent a pallet of promotional items and materials, which we broke down and transported in the pick up truck.  Our own N.C. Soybean Producers Association promotional items added another pallet or two.  And this is not lightweight, feathery promotional material like you might get from some other commodity groups.  This is heavy duty, cast iron American soybean promotional material, printed on iron fiber paper with 40-weight soy ink.  

We broke one wheel on the hand truck the other week and found a near match at Agri Supply.  Who knew how many options for hand truck wheels are available?  I suspect we will break the other wheel before this show is over.  But the surprising thing is how popular these materials are with the farmers at the show.  The right mix of pencils, notepads, grocery bags and pocket calendars really goes a long way in helping to promote the work of the soybean checkoff.  The exhibit area produces some really good conversations with farmers about what is happening on their farms and in their communities, and what the checkoff and the N.C. soybean association can do to serve....

I cleaned out the family freezer last Friday night.  It was so full that we were rotating food items through only the upper six inches, and everything below was embedded in a block of ice and permafrost.  I unloaded the top layer of Trader Joes frozen pizzas and other meals almost ready to eat, and set to work on the real business down below. That included several packages of deer, all wrapped in white paper, identified and marked with dates back to deer season 2003.  Several had no date but were attributed to my nephew Kirk, so that means those were Yadkin County deer.  There was a bear loin wrapped in freezer paper, dated 1998.  I didn't shoot the bear.  Several, several bags of squirrel frozen in blocks of ice.  Total incapsulation in ice is the only way to prevent freezer burn.  Some dove that were shot over Commissioner Troxler's farm in 2010.  The doves were also frozen in ice.  Four vacuum packs of striped bass fillets from the Roanoke River.  Some long forgotten Boston butts in aluminum foil.  Maybe...

Hurricane Irene left extensive damage to field crops, and the tobacco crop in particular sufferered catastropic damage.  In the case of soybeans, there is probably no possibility of assigning a dollar value or percent loss due to the storm impact, until the crop is harvested and the yield monitors tell their tale.  With tobacco, which was mature and ready for harvest at the time of the storm, there are some obvious and telling signs of damage and deterioration and, most likely, farmers have formed a clear indication of what is lost and what can be salvaged.    For those looking to assign a value to soybean losses, only time will tell. Some of the highest producing counties were squarely in the path of the storm, and in some cases soybean plants were under water long enough or suffered salt damage and scalding enough that losses are to be expected.  In the general situtation east of Interstate 95, where beans of varying maturity groups were planted from May through July, it is hard to say what will be the net...

The North Carolina Agricultural Statistics service, a cooperative endeavor of federal and state agriculture departments, is the source for crop progress reports, county production totals for all commodities grown in North Carolina, and much more.  When the soybean association needed to know the amount in dollars of wildlife damage on soybeans and other crops, N.C. Agricultural Statistics was the only source that could survey farmers and produce a reliable study based on their responses.  N.C. Ag Statistics surveys promise anonymity and guarantee non-disclosure when the results could impact markets.  The service is both accepted and trusted by farmers to protect their survey responses.  Seeing how the USDA began collecting statistics way back in 1863, and how the cooperative relationship between USDA and North Carolina’s Agriculture Department was established nearly 100 years ago, it is no wonder that the service continues to be invaluable to the state’s agricultural industry. Now come reports that the USDA is considering abolishing the North Carolina Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service and others like it around the country, and consolidating the service into regional offices.  This idea might have merit if there were significant cost savings and an urgent need, but there is neither.  It all smacks of bureaucratic politics with a view towards greater centralization and control from Washington.  It would not produce a single good outcome for the agricultural producers of North Carolina....

The annual exercise in drafting the new fiscal year's budget requires us to estimate the size and value of North Carolina's 2011 soybean crop.  We aren't going to print our estimate here, but it is worth noting that we have gotten pretty good at estimating one or the other.  The board has responsibility for collecting the soybean checkoff assessment and managing research and promotion programs funded by the checkoff.  So planning for that task requires us to make a pretty good estimate of the size and value of production.  The board of directors will approve the new fiscal year's budget at their July board meeting in Wilmington, N.C. The Soybean Scene newsletter hit mailboxes the week of June 6.  Not bad except that the current issue is the May 2011 newsletter.  There are three action items for soybean farmers in the Soybean Scene.  First, we offer a contest to help gather email addresses from readers.  The prize is an iPad2.  Second, we call for prospective bloggers to submit writing samples to us and try out to write our farm blog.  We are looking for a farm family member to creatively show the care and consideration that goes into modern farm life.  Third, there is registration information for soybean farmers participating in the NC SoyPAC sporting clays tournament, July 22 at the Andrews Farm....

Monsanto's patent on the original Roundup Ready soybean trait is set to expire after the 2014 planting season.  The Roundup Ready (RR) patent and the Roundup Ready to Yield (RR2Y) patent are general utility patents, by the way, not Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) protections, and that is one reason farmers cannot save seed.  But after the 2014 planting season, farmers will apparently be able to save seed from the original RR trait varieties.  That is one impact of the patent expiration, but there are a couple more.  The implications have been outlined by Roger McEowen in a paper prepared for the Iowa State University Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation. One impact feared by farmers is international trade disruption if the RR trait lingers around in the U.S. crop.  The question that arises is who will maintain the regulatory approvals granted by foreign governments necessary to market Roundup...

The tools of farmers are becoming so precise that almost unheard of issues (for farmers) are moving to the forefront. Farmers have adapted Global Position System (GPS) technology just like engineers, surveyors, and the military.  Unlike Joe and Susy Sixpack in the family wagon, who also have adapted GPS for plotting the course to the soccer field, farmer owned GPS receivers must operate with a high degree of precision measured in inches.  That's where farmers engage with technologies like RTK level correction and with issues like frequency interference that are frankly a mystery to most of us.  But the farm community will have to pay attention, as more technologies become available to the end user, and as more companies incorporate these technologies into their hardware. 

Farms are using the Continuously Operating Reference System (CORS), which is maintained in North Carolina by the State Geodetic Survey, to correct their GPS receivers for accuracy.  CORS is one of those necessary but highly obscure technologies provided by government and funded through a various federal grants.  Precision agriculture would be much less precise without it....

A special report titled “Feeding the World” in a recent issue of The Economist magazine examined how we will cope with world food production in the coming decades.  The report concluded that the focus on a “food crisis” has produced competing perspectives on the main problems with food and agriculture, and led to different proposals for shaping the future of agriculture.  Not surprisingly, the report elicited some interesting and diverse responses from readers.  Their comments, published in letters to the editor in a more recent issue, show the extent to which competing perspectives are shaping this debate:  (1) organic production is the most sustainable and ethical production method and can be efficient enough to replace conventional production, (2) conventional production is the most efficient and economical method of production and cannot be replaced, (3) genetically modified crops are potentially dangerous to the environment and human health, (4) genetically modified crops are potentially the only solution...