In Farm Bureau Poll shows strong support for TPP American Farm Bureau Federation says a new poll from Morning Consult shows most voters favor fair trade, something all candidates should keep in mind as a congressional vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement comes closer to reality. “Most Americans support free trade,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said, “and most farmers do, too. Exports account for almost a quarter of American farm receipts, so opposing fair trade agreements like TPP doesn’t make a lot of sense to rural America.” Among other things, the August poll found 57 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of fair trade; 50 percent said they would be more likely to support TPP if they knew it would provide new markets overseas for U.S. farm products; 52 percent say they would be more likely to support TPP if they knew the deal would increase annual income in the U.S. by $131 billion; 69 percent support trade
On Sept. 12, 13 and 14, judges visited the farms of this year’s Young Farmers & Ranchers Achievement Award finalists: rice and soybean farmers Josh and Melissa Cureton of Cash (pictured here with their children Gracye, Cole and Mattyx); cattle ranchers Jamey and Sara Allen of Prattsville; and cattle, swine, soybean and corn producers Jeremy and Tracie Kitchens of Lewisville. Winners will be announced at ArFB’s December convention. policies that will open new markets for U.S. products and farmers; and, after they were told TPP would increase net farm income by $4.4 billion and agricultural exports by $5.3 billion, 52 percent said they would be more likely to support TPP. “Most trade deals start out with loud opposition, only to fade away once the details become known,” Duvall said. “We are convinced TPP is no different. The more people know, the more they will More than 60 producers attended the Grapes of Arkansas Workshop and Field Day Sept. 15 at UA’s Fruit Research Station in Clarksville. The event included a “hay ride” vineyard tour highlighting the station’s grape-breeding program, and talks by Dr. John Clark, Georgia grape grower Jacob Paulk, extension fruit specialist Amanda McWhirt and others.
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support this vitally important agreement.” According to AFBF, the TPP agreement is expected to increase cash receipts and net exports from Arkansas by $148.2 million and $95.5 million per year respectively. It is estimated that the increased marketing opportunities for Arkansas’ farmers and ranchers will add more than 720 jobs to the Arkansas economy. Eliminating tariffs and other trade barriers on Arkansas’ agricultural
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A Publication of Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation
September 23, 2016 • Vol. 19, No. 19
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In Arkansas
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exports to TPPpartner countries will increase trade for a range of Arkansas agricultural products, including rice, soybeans, poultry, beef and processed food products. Export sales make an important contribution to Arkansas’s farm economy, which had total cash receipts of $10.3 billion in 2014
The Dickey family of Greenbrier was recognized as the Faulkner County Farm Family of the Year during Faulkner Co. FB’s annual meeting Sept. 8 in Conway. (Left to right) Madison, Melanie, Kim and Michael Dickey received their award from county president Chris Schaefers. The Dickeys raise cattle, sheep and hay, and Michael also trains horses.
Welch to lead foundation Ewell Welch, who retired as Arkansas Farm Bureau’s executive vice president in 2013, will bring his administrative skills to his new position as executive director of the Arkansas 4-H Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports not only the educational programs of Arkansas 4-H, but also the operations of the C.A. Vines Arkansas 4-H Center. “I am honored by this opportunity to not only serve the Arkansas 4-H Foundation, but also the families the foundation serves,” Welch said. “4-H is actively shaping Arkansas’ future leaders, and to be in a position to work with the volunteers who make up the foundation board in support of 4-H members and programs is a privilege.” “We are thrilled to have Ewell aboard,” said Rick Cartwright, interim director
of the Cooperative Extension Service. “His professionalism, experience and knowledge of the state and our 4-H programs make him a perfect fit for the foundation.”
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Arkansas schools win grants Two Arkansas school districts have received a total of $35,000 in grants this year from America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education, sponsored by the Monsanto Fund. The program partners with
ArFB Executive Vice President Warren Carter addressed Farm Bureau employees from multiple states who met Sept. 13-14 in Little Rock for the annual Member Benefits Conference. Attendees got updates on member benefit programs from AFBF, shared what they’re doing in their own states to promote member benefits and gathered ideas to take back home.
Arkansas is one of the leading states in the country for food insecurity. To help, the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, Mosaic Church and city of Little Rock have rolled out the Fresh2You mobile farmers market, a converted city bus that made its first stop at Parris Towers last month. To learn more, go to www. arfb.com, click on Media & Communication and look for our podcast.
On Sept. 8, there was a full house at the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences in Fayetteville where Monsanto Company, the University of Arkansas Collegiate Farm Bureau and Arkansas Farm Bureau came together to discuss biotechnology and the sustainability of GMOs. Vince Crow of Monsanto answered questions about GMOs, food safety, and more. farmers to keep rural schools growing by supporting math and science education. KIPP Delta Public Schools in Helena received a $25,000 grant for “Targeted Math Instruction through Technology.” A $10,000 grant went to Lee County School District in Marianna for the “Lee County AgriScience Youth Challenge.” Since 2011, Grow Rural Education has awarded more than $9 million to support math and science education in more than 650 rural school districts across the country. For 2016, the program was available in 1,326 counties in 40 states. “The variety of ways in which rural school districts use these grants to improve math and science education for their students is incredible,” said Michelle Insco, Monsanto Fund’s program officer. Projects have ranged from constructing aquaponics-outfitted greenhouses, to establishing robotics programs, to creating curriculum focused on helping their local communities solve environmental sustainability challenges. Farmer nominations for the 2017 program will be accepted beginning in early January. For more information, visit www.GrowRuralEducation.com. Moms on the Farm Tour On Oct. 25, attendees on the Moms on the Farm Tour will learn how food is raised on several northwest Arkansas farms. “We want people to feel more informed about the food they feed their families,”
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said Janeal Yancey with UA’s Department of Animal Science. “We want to introduce consumers to farmers.” The tour will depart from the UA Pauline Whitaker Animal Science Arena on Garland Avenue in Fayetteville at 8:30 a.m. and visit Hart Dairy, Willow Springs Cattle Ranch and a poultry farm. After visiting the farms, attendees will return to Pauline Whitaker for lunch and cooking demonstrations by the Arkansas Cattlewomen. The first Moms on the Farm Tour was organized in 2012 by faculty and staff of the Division of Agriculture and University of Arkansas Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences with the intention of providing the moms who attended deeper insight into the agricultural processes that bring food to them and their families. “We call ourselves ‘Moms on the Farm,’ but anyone who wants to learn more about how their food is produced is welcome to join us,” said Yancey. Participants from past tours have gained a better understanding of production agriculture and of the farmers behind the production. One past participant is Kate Shoulders, a faculty member of the Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and
Jimmy D. Jennings, Sr. (left) and his family were honored as Pulaski County Farm Family of the Year on Sept. 15 at the county’s annual meeting in Sherwood. The Jennings family runs a cattle and hay operation near Sherwood. Presenting the award was Randy Forst, staff chair at the Pulaski County office of UA’s Cooperative Extension Service. Technology. “I already supported farmers in a general way, but to hear that they didn’t all come into farming easily or via their own families was really interesting,” she said. “It helped me feel more connected to Arkansas farmers since I was new to the area.” For more information, contact Janeal Yancey at jws09@uark.edu or 870-6884247. The tour is free, but space is limited.
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Elsewhere Shannon Davis, a soybean and rice farmer near Bono (Craighead County), looks over part of his soybean crop destroyed by floodwaters from the Cache River in August. About 20 percent of Davis’ cropland was destroyed. Numerous farmers along the Cache and other rivers lost crops due to flooding. UA’s Division of Agriculture has estimated crop losses in five northeast Arkansas counties will exceed $46 million.
EPA violated farmers’ privacy The Environmental Protection Agency has violated the personal privacy of tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers, according to a unanimous ruling issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The ruling in American Farm Bureau Federation and National Pork Producers Council vs. EPA concerned the federal agency’s 2013 release to three environmental groups of a vast compilation of spreadsheets containing personal information about farmers and ranchers who raise livestock and poultry in 29 states. The case also related to similar
personal information from farmers and ranchers in six additional states that had yet to be released. The information included the names of farmers, ranchers and sometimes other family members, home addresses, GPS coordinates, telephone numbers and emails. EPA claimed that it was required to disclose the information under the Freedom of Information Act. “This was an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy by a federal agency in violation of law,” said AFBF General Counsel Ellen Steen. “The court’s decision is a vindication of the right of farm families to control their own personal information. Farmers and ranchers have a strong privacy interest in their personal information, including their home address, even when they live and work on the farm. “EPA now has to ‘recall’ all of the personal information it unlawfully released, but unfortunately that information has now been in the hands of the FOIA requestors for three years, and many feel that the damage is done,” Steen said. “AFBF will continue to work to ensure that personal information about farmers and ranchers is not disclosed by EPA.” Editor Keith Sutton
keith.sutton@arfb.com
In the Market As of September 20, 2016:
Bayer exec on Monsanto deal Bayer AG Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann on Sept. 20 defended the company’s planned $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto to a gathering of investors and analysts. “There was a perception that this was something that came out of the blue and was completely off strategy,” Baumann said of the Monsanto deal. “Just to set the record straight, we were crystal clear, in Sept. 2014, that our objective is to build our life-sciences portfolio,” based on health care and agriculture, he added. In an apparent concession to concerned investors, Baumann stressed the central role of pharmaceuticals for Bayer’s future growth. Baumann also said Bayer had a record of successfully integrating and separating acquisitions and divestitures. Bayer and Monsanto have said they expect their deal to close by the end of 2017. EPA: glyphosate not carcinogenic The Environmental Protection Agency concluded in a 227-page paper that glyphosate, the most widely used pesticide in the world and a major product for Monsanto and other chemical makers, is unlikely to cause cancer. The agency will be convening a meeting of independent scientists in October to review its evaluation of glyphosate. India in talks with U.S. India remains in consultations with U.S. trade officials in hopes of convincing the U.S. to drop its demand of $450 million annually for alleged non-compliance with the World Trade Organization’s verdict on a dispute over poultry imports. If India cannot convince the U.S. that its new import measures are in line with the WTO’s ruling, the country is likely to seek a WTO compliance panel to establish that it had not erred in its implementation and the request for retaliation was unjustified, an Indian government official told BusinessLine.
Rosario exchange curbs hopes for Argentine corn surge The Rosario grains exchange curbed expectations over the surge in Argentine corn to be planted in the soon-to-start sowing season, even as talk of rowing back on a tax concession cuts the appeal of rival crop soybeans. The exchange forecast Argentina’s corn seedings at 5.7 million hectares for the 2016-17 harvest, an 18-percent surge year on year but below the figures being talked about by other commentators. The International Grains Council forecast a rise of “around 20 percent” in corn plantings, “because of potentially high returns and with farmers keen to include more maize into annual rotations.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast a jump of 28 percent in commercial corn sowings, while at Soybean and Corn Advisor, influential analyst Michael Cordonnier has forecast a 25-percent rise on the same basis. GMO corn varieties approved The European Commission has authorized 11 varieties of GMO corn produced by Syngenta for use as food or feed. The authorization covers Syngenta product Bt11 x MIR162 x MIR604 x GA21 and 10 related types of GMO corn. Low ag prices into 2017 The head of Louis Dreyfus Co., one of the world’s top-four food-commodities traders, said that agricultural prices will remain low into 2017 as farmers around the world harvest bumper crops. “Prices for wheat, corn and soybeans will continue going down,” Dreyfus Chief Executive Officer Gonzalo Ramirez Martiarena said in an interview in Buenos Aires this week. “Corn yields are so good and productivity is so high in the U.S. that they keep planting despite low prices.” USSEC on China announcement On Sept. 13, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman informed China that the U.S. has launched a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over China’s price supports for corn, wheat and rice, saying they distort world markets and are costing U.S. farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) is providing guidance to help frame discussions. It has 35 years of experience working in cooperation with Chinese organizations to develop a mutually beneficial trade relationship. USSEC says China is a very important market for U.S. soy and soy products. Last year, nearly 25 percent of the U.S. soy crop was exported to China, and China accounted for about 46 percent of total exports of U.S. soy. USSEC remains a committed partner in sustainably and safely producing soybeans for China’s oilseed security. The organization recently welcomed members of the Chinese soybean industry to the U.S. Soy Global Trade Exchange in Indianapolis. Additionally, two Chinese trade teams recently traveled in the Midwest to view the U.S. soy crop. China soybean imports slow Reuters reports a jump in domestic soy output, and plentiful state stocks will slow the growth in Chinese demand for the oilseed in 2016-17, an official Chinese think tank said Sept. 19, just as the United States is harvesting a record crop. China is the world’s top buyer of soybeans, typically importing about two thirds of the globally traded volume. Imports have grown each year since 2004, by an average of 5 million metric tons annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the jump in demand is likely to slow this year as the domestic crop grows by almost 13 percent to 13.1 million metric tons, the most in five years, said the China National Grain and Oils Information Center (CNGOIC). The USDA recently revised its 201617 China soybean import figure down by 1 million metric tons to 86 million metric tons. “We expect there could be further downward revisions in the future,” said CNGOIC, predicting import volumes of 85 million metric tons.
CONTACT • Matt King 501-228-1297, matt.king@arfb.com.